A manager at the FAA’s New York Center begins forwarding evidence relating to the 9/11 attacks to the FBI, but he does not pass on, or reveal the existence of, a tape recording of some of the center’s air traffic controllers recalling their interactions with the hijacked aircraft. [US Department of Transportation, 5/4/2004 ] Shortly after the attacks occurred, Kevin Delaney, the New York Center’s quality assurance manager, was instructed to make a tape recording of six controllers at the center who had been involved in handling or tracking two of the hijacked aircraft, giving their personal accounts of what happened (see 11:40 a.m. September 11, 2001). [9/11 Commission, 10/1/2003 ; Washington Post, 5/6/2004; Air Safety Week, 5/17/2004 ]Tape Not Provided to FBI - In response to verbal requests from the FBI, the FAA’s liaison to the bureau provides it with evidential material relating to the 9/11 attacks. Beginning on September 12, Delaney forwards evidence materials, as they become available, to the FBI through this liaison. But, although the tape of the controllers’ statements was logged into the New York Center’s record of evidence, neither Delaney nor Mike McCormick, the center’s manager, passes it to the FBI. Furthermore, neither of the two managers even discloses the existence of the tape to the FBI or the FAA liaison. Nor do they provide the center’s evidence log, which references the tape, to the FBI. Yet McCormick will later claim that one of his reasons for having requested the tape be made on September 11 was that he wanted a recording of the controllers’ statements that would be immediately available for law enforcement efforts. [US Department of Transportation, 5/4/2004 ; Air Safety Week, 5/17/2004 ] He had also reassured the six controllers that the tape with their recorded statements on would be strictly for use only by law enforcement personnel (see (Shortly Before 11:40 a.m.) September 11, 2001). [9/11 Commission, 10/1/2003 ]Tape Could Have Been Provided on Following Day - By September 13, the FAA liaison will have provided the FBI with air traffic control voice and radar data, which the bureau is most interested in receiving, as well as several written statements that have already been obtained from controllers at the FAA’s Boston and Cleveland Centers, and from personnel at Washington’s Dulles Airport. Had McCormick or Delaney notified the liaison of the tape’s existence, he could have forwarded it to the FBI along with these statements. The tape will be deliberately destroyed several months later (see Between December 2001 and February 2002), and is never made available to the FBI for its investigation. [US Department of Transportation, 5/4/2004 ; Air Safety Week, 5/17/2004 ]

Airphone from Flight 93 wreckage. [Source: National Museum of American History]The first FBI agents arrive at the Flight 93 crash scene soon after it goes down. [Kashurba, 2002, pp. 60] Due to the criminal nature of the crash, the FBI becomes lead authority for the investigation of the site. Attempts are made to have the area declared a federal disaster, but these are unsuccessful. [DMORT National News, 1/2002] For about two weeks, the FBI’s evidence recovery team of about 150 agents goes over the site with sifters, filtering evidence from the soil. It recovers about 510 pounds of human remains. [Longman, 2002, pp. 259; Age (Melbourne), 9/9/2002] Despite the lack of wreckage reported by those first at the crash scene (see (After 10:03 a.m.) September 11, 2001), the FBI claims that it recovers 95 percent of the plane. The largest piece found, it says, is a seven-foot-long piece of the fuselage skin, including four windows. With the exception of the two black boxes, all wreckage is passed on to United Airlines. Asked what United will do with this, a spokeswoman says, “I don’t think a decision has been made… but we’re not commenting.” [CNN, 9/24/2001; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 9/25/2001] While conducting its investigation of the crash site, the FBI overrules a plan to carefully map the area and mark the positions of debris so as to determine exactly how Flight 93 crashed, claiming this would be too time-consuming (see September 16, 2001). [Longman, 2002, pp. 262] After it completes its work, the site becomes the responsibility of the county coroner, who continues the search for remains. [Longman, 2002, pp. 258-259]

ISI Director Lt. Gen. Mahmood Ahmed, extending his Washington visit because of the 9/11 attacks, meets with US officials and negotiates Pakistan’s cooperation with the US against al-Qaeda. On the morning of September 12, 2001, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage summons Mahmood and Pakistani ambassador to the US Maleeha Lodhi to his office. He allegedly offers Mahmood the choice: “Help us and breathe in the 21st century along with the international community or be prepared to live in the Stone Age.” [Deutsche Presse-Agentur (Hamburg), 9/12/2001; Japan Economic Newswire, 9/17/2001; LA Weekly, 11/9/2001; Rashid, 2008, pp. 27] Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf will write in a 2006 book (see September 25, 2006) that Armitage actually threatens to bomb Pakistan “back to the Stone Age.” However, Armitage will deny using this wording and say he did not threaten military force. [National Public Radio, 9/22/2006] Armitage says he will soon have a list of specific demands for Pakistan (see September 13-15, 2001). Mahmood makes an unequivocal commitment that Pakistan will stand by the US. [Rashid, 2008, pp. 27] However, this commitment apparently is not sincere, because Mahmood returns to Pakistan several days later and tries to convince Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to support the Taliban instead of the US in the upcoming Afghanistan conflict (see September 15, 2001).

A number of witnesses who claim they saw Mohamed Atta living in Venice, Florida in early 2001 later allege that, in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, they are intimidated by the FBI and told to keep quiet about what they knew. Amanda Keller, who claims to have lived with Atta during early 2001 (see (February-April 2001)), later says that, even after she moved away from Venice, FBI agents called her every other day for several months after the attacks. She tells investigative reporter Daniel Hopsicker about “intimidation by the FBI” that she suffered, adding, “They told me not to talk to anybody, to keep my mouth shut.” Stephanie Frederickson, who remembers Keller and Atta living next door to her in the Sandpiper Apartments in Venice, later recalls, “At first, right after the attack, [the FBI] told me I must have been mistaken in my identification. Or they would insinuate that I was lying. Finally they stopped trying to get me to change my story, and just stopped by once a week to make sure I hadn’t been talking to anyone. Who was I going to tell? Most everyone around here already knew.” Charles Grapentine, the manager of the Sandpiper Apartments, also confirms Atta having lived with Keller. He says that, after 9/11, the FBI “called me a liar, and told me to keep my mouth shut.” [Hopsicker, 2004, pp. 62-63, 65 and 88-89] According to the FBI’s account of events, Atta had left Venice by late December 2000 or early January 2001. Its account makes no mention of him returning there later. [US Congress, 9/26/2002] A former manager at Huffman Aviation, the Venice flight school attended by Atta in late 2000 (see July 6-December 19, 2000), also later alleges that the FBI intimidated him and told him to keep quiet. He says the FBI was “outside my house four hours after the attack.” He claims his phones were bugged after 9/11, and adds, “I thought these guys [Atta and his associates] were double agents. Why is that so incriminating?” [Hopsicker, 2004, pp. 149-150]

According to the New York Post, “Credit cards belonging to the suicide hijackers continued to be used after the Sept. 11 attacks—indicating associates of the terrorists remained in the United States weeks after the kamikaze strikes, authorities said…” The cards are used at least until around the start of October 2001. An unnamed official says, “We believe there are additional people out there. Many of the closest associates got out of the country early on, but we also believe there are a number of people here we’re still looking at.” The hijackers had more than 100 credit cards in their own names, variations of their names, or by using false identities. The credit card transactions are recorded in Florida, New Jersey, and Maryland. While officials believe it is possible that at least some of the credit cards may have been stolen and used by people not connected to the hijackers. In some cases, the credit card use helps investigators detain associates of the hijackers. [New York Post, 10/17/2001] An October 2001 FBI timeline of hijacker movements made public in 2008 will note some of these credit card uses. For instance, a credit card jointly owned by hijackers Mohamed Atta and Marwan Alshehhi is used twice on September 15, and a credit card owned by hijacker Fayez Ahmed Banihammad is used on September 17. [Federal Bureau of Investigation, 10/2001, pp. 296 ] What becomes of these detained people is not clear, because use of hijacker credit cards is not asserted for anyone later charged or released by US authorities. An account six months later will suggest that investigators have only connected 27 credit cards to the hijackers, not more than 100. [CNN, 5/22/2002]

Neoconservative academic and author Laurie Mylroie, who has argued that Saddam Hussein was behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombings (see October 2000), publishes an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal blaming Hussein for the 9/11 bombings. Though Mylroie has been thoroughly discredited (one former journalist, Peter Bergen, will call her a “crackpot”—see December 2003), and though US intelligence analysts are already telling journalists and White House officials that Iraq had nothing to do with the bombings, Mylroie’s assertions receive major coverage from many US and British media outlets. In a follow-up interview on CBS News, she says, “In my view, yesterday’s events were the latest in Saddam’s war against the United States.” Author Craig Unger later notes that Mylroie’s baseless charges may be considered harmless eccentricity except for two things: Her claims perfectly parallel the policy aims of her neoconservative colleagues and associates in the White House; and while few Americans have ever heard of Osama bin Laden or al-Qaeda, and few find it credible that such devastation could be wrought by a small group of cave-dwelling fanatics, Saddam Hussein is a familiar name to most Americans, “a villain,” Unger will write, “straight out of central casting.” Mylroie’s specious claims will help fix the blame for 9/11 in Americans’ minds directly on Hussein and Iraq, Unger will claim. [Unger, 2007, pp. 215-216]

David Wurmser (left) and Michael Maloof (right). [Source: ThinkProgress.org (left) and PBS (right)]Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith set up a secret intelligence unit, named the Counter Terrorism Evaluation Group (CTEG—sometimes called the Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group), to sift through raw intelligence reports and look for evidence of a link between Iraq and al-Qaeda. [Risen, 2006, pp. 183-184; Quarterly Journal of Speech, 5/2006 ]Modeled after "Team B" - The four to five -person unit, a “B Team” commissioned by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and modeled after the “Team B” analysis exercise of 1976 (see November 1976), is designed to study the policy implications of connections between terrorist organizations. CTEG uses powerful computers and software to scan and sort already-analyzed documents and reports from the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, and other agencies in an effort to consider possible interpretations and angles of analysis that these agencies may have missed due to deeply ingrained biases. Middle East specialist Harold Rhode recruits David Wurmser to head the project. Wurmser, the director of Middle East studies for the American Enterprise Institute, is a known advocate of regime change in Iraq, having expressed his views in a 1997 op-ed piece published in the Wall Street Journal (see November 12, 1997) and having participated in the drafting of the 1996 policy paper for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm
(see July 8, 1996). F. Michael Maloof, a former aide to Richard Perle, is also invited to take part in the effort, which becomes known internally as the “Wurmser-Maloof” project. Neither Wurmser nor Maloof are intelligence professionals [Washington Times, 1/14/2002; New York Times, 10/24/2002; Mother Jones, 1/2004; Los Angeles Times, 2/8/2004; Reuters, 2/19/2004; Quarterly Journal of Speech, 5/2006 ] , but both are close friends of Feith’s. Countering the CIA - Since the days of Team B, neoconservatives have insisted the CIA has done nothing but underestimate and downplay the threats facing the US. “They have a record over 30 years of being wrong,” says Defense Policy Board member Richard Perle, who adds that the CIA refuses to even allow for the possibility of a connection between Iraq and al-Qaeda—one of the topics that most interests Wurmser and Maloof. [Unger, 2007, pp. 226-227]Finding Facts to Fit Premises - Maloof and Wurmser set up shop in a small room on the third floor of the Pentagon, where they set about developing a “matrix” that charts connections between terrorist organizations and their support infrastructures, including support systems within nations themselves. Both men have security clearances, so they are able to draw data from both raw and finished intelligence products available through the Pentagon’s classified computer system. More highly classified intelligence is secured by Maloof from his previous office. He will later recall, “We scoured what we could get up to the secret level, but we kept getting blocked when we tried to get more sensitive materials. I would go back to my office, do a pull and bring it in.… We discovered tons of raw intelligence. We were stunned that we couldn’t find any mention of it in the CIA’s finished reports.” Each week, Wurmser and Maloof report their findings to Stephen Cambone, a fellow member of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC—see January 26, 1998) neoconservative and Feith’s chief aide. George Packer will later describe their process, writing, “Wurmser and Maloof were working deductively, not inductively: The premise was true; facts would be found to confirm it.” CTEG’s activities cause tension within the intelligence community. Critics claim that its members manipulate and distort intelligence, “cherry-picking” bits of information that support their preconceived conclusions. Although the State Department’s own intelligence outfit, the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), is supposed to have access to all intelligence materials circulating through the government, INR chief Greg Thielmann later says, “I didn’t know about its [CTEG’s] existence. They were cherry-picking intelligence and packaging it for [Vice President] Cheney and [Defense Secretary] Donald Rumsfeld to take to the president. That’s the kind of rogue operation that peer review is intended to prevent.” A defense official later adds, “There is a complete breakdown in the relationship between the Defense Department and the intelligence community, to include its own Defense Intelligence Agency. Wolfowitz and company disbelieve any analysis that doesn’t support their own preconceived conclusions. The CIA is enemy territory, as far are they’re concerned.” Wurmser and Maloof’s “matrix” leads them to conclude that Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, and other groups with conflicting ideologies and objectives are allowing these differences to fall to the wayside as they discover their shared hatred of the US. The group’s research also leads them to believe that al-Qaeda has a presence in such places as Latin American. For weeks, the unit will attempt to uncover evidence tying Saddam Hussein to the 9/11 attacks, a theory advocated by both Feith and Wolfowitz. [Washington Times, 1/14/2002; New York Times, 10/24/2002; Mother Jones, 1/2004; Los Angeles Times, 2/8/2004; Quarterly Journal of Speech, 5/2006 ; Unger, 2007, pp. 226-227]Denial - Defending the project, Paul Wolfowitz will tell the New York Times that the team’s purpose is to circumvent the problem “in intelligence work, that people who are pursuing a certain hypothesis will see certain facts that others won’t, and not see other facts that others will.” He insists that the special Pentagon unit is “not making independent intelligence assessments.” [New York Times, 10/24/2002] The rest of the US intelligence community is not impressed with CTEG’s work. “I don’t have any problem with [the Pentagon] bringing in a couple of people to take another look at the intelligence and challenge the assessment,” former DIA analyst Patrick Lang will later say. “But the problem is that they brought in people who were not intelligence professionals, people were brought in because they thought like them. They knew what answers they were going to get.” [Unger, 2007, pp. 226-227]Dismissing CIA's Findings that Iraq, al-Qaeda are Not Linked - One example is an early CTEG critique of a CIA report, Iraq and al-Qaeda: Interpreting a Murky Relationship. CTEG notes that the CIA included data indicating links between Iraq and al-Qaeda, and then blast the agency for “attempt[ing] to discredit, dismiss, or downgrade much of this reporting, resulting in inconsistent conclusions in many instances.” In CTEG’s view, policy makers should overlook any equivocations and discrepancies and dismiss the CIA’s guarded conclusions: “[T]he CIA report ought to be read for content only—and CIA’s interpretation ought to be ignored.” Their decision is powered by Wolfowitz, who has instructed them to ignore the intelligence community’s view that al-Qaeda and Iraq were doubtful allies. They also embrace the theory that 9/11 hijacker Mohammad Atta met with an Iraqi official in Prague, a theory discredited by intelligence professionals (see December 2001 and Late July 2002). Author Gordon R. Mitchell refers to the original Team B in calling the critique “1976 redux, with the same players deploying competitive intelligence analysis to sweep away policy obstacles presented by inconvenient CIA threat assessments.” In 1976, the Team B members were outsiders; now they are, Mitchell will write, “firmly entrenched in the corridors of power. Control over the levers of White House bureaucracy enabled Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz to embed a Team B entity within the administration itself. The stage was set for a new kind of Team B intelligence exercise—a stealth coup staged by one arm of the government against the other.” [Quarterly Journal of Speech, 5/2006 ; Agence France-Presse, 2/9/2007]Stovepiping Information Directly to White House - The group is later accused of stovepiping intelligence directly to the White House. Lang later tells the Washington Times: “That unit had meetings with senior White House officials without the CIA or the Senate being aware of them. That is not legal. There has to be oversight.” According to Lang and another US intelligence official, the two men go to the White House several times to brief officials, bypassing CIA analysts whose analyses they disagreed with. They allegedly brief White House staffers Stephen Hadley, the deputy national security adviser, and Lewis “Scooter” Libby, chief of staff for Vice President Richard Cheney, according to congressional staffers. [Washington Times, 7/29/2004] In October 2004, Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) will conclude, “[T]he differences between the judgments of the IC [intelligence community] and the DOD [Department of Defense] policy office [CTEG] might have been addressed by a discussion between the IC and DOD of underlying assumptions and the credibility and reliability of sources of raw intelligence reports. However, the IC never had the opportunity to defend its analysis, nor point out problems with DOD’s ‘alternative’ view of the Iraq-al-Qaeda relationship when it was presented to the policymakers at the White House.” Levin will add, “Unbeknownst to the IC, policymakers were getting information that was inconsistent with, and thus undermined, the professional judgments of the IC experts. The changes included information that was dubious, misrepresented, or of unknown import.” [Quarterly Journal of Speech, 5/2006 ]Passing Intelligence to INC - According to unnamed Pentagon and US intelligence officials, the group is also accused of providing sensitive CIA and Pentagon intercepts to the US-funded Iraqi National Congress, which then pass them on to the government of Iran. [Washington Times, 7/29/2004] “I knew Chalabi from years earlier,” Maloof later recalls, “so I basically asked for help in giving us direction as to where to look for information in our own system in order to be able to get a clear picture of what we were doing. [Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress] were quite helpful.” [Unger, 2007, pp. 226-227]CTEG Evolves into OSP - By August 2002, CTEG will be absorbed into a much more expansive “alternative intelligence” group, the Office of Special Plans (OSP—see September 2002). Wurmser will later be relocated to the State Department where he will be the senior adviser to Undersecretary Of State for Arms Control John Bolton.(see September 2002). [American Conservative, 12/1/2003; Mother Jones, 1/2004; Quarterly Journal of Speech, 5/2006 ]Public Finally Learns of CTEG's Existence - Over a year after its formation, Rumsfeld will announce its existence, but only after the media reveals the existence of the OSP (see October 24, 2002).

In the months following 9/11, Vice President Dick Cheney spends large portions of his time in what are referred to as “secure and undisclosed” locations. [CNN, 3/1/2002] He is accompanied to these locations by those considered his “essential staff.” This includes his chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, and Libby’s assistant, Jennifer Mayfield; Cheney’s personal secretary, Debbie Heiden; his personal aide, Brian McCormack; one of his military aides; and either his counsel, David Addington, or his staff secretary, Neil Patel. Staff Ordered to Maintain Secrecy - Cheney’s personnel are ordered not to mention the vice president’s name or title on the phone; his schedule is to go out only over secure fax or classified e-mail; and all members of his staff must always keep a packed bag ready at the office. According to journalist and author Stephen Hayes, the “secure undisclosed location” the vice president goes to is usually Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland, although there are other locations. [Hayes, 2007, pp. 349]Maintaining the 'Continuity of Government' - Cheney explains to PBS the reasoning behind his going to these locations: “[W]ith the possibility that the White House or the Capitol or other facilities here [in Washington] could be targeted in a terrorist attack… it’s not a good practice for the president and I to spend a lot of time together.… [I]t’s important from the standpoint of our responsibility to maintain the continuity of government to always see to it that nobody—no adversary or enemy would have the capacity of, in effect, decapitating the federal government by taking out the president and the vice president and other senior management, senior leadership.” [PBS, 10/12/2001] Yet, despite the supposed danger, he still goes ahead with a pre-planned pheasant-hunting trip in early November (see (November 4-5, 2001)). Cheney’s time at the “secure and undisclosed” locations is part of “shadow government” procedures that are implemented following the 9/11 attacks (see (2:00 p.m.) September 11, 2001). [CNN, 3/1/2002] In interviews, he never mentions that he had similarly gone away to undisclosed locations on a regular basis throughout the 1980s, during a series of Continuity of Government exercises (see 1981-1992). [Mann, 2004, pp. 138-139 and 296; Atlantic Monthly, 3/2004]

According to counterterrorism expert Rohan Gunaratna, immediately after 9/11, a European intelligence agency warns the US that a prominent member of the Indonesian government is in close touch with al-Qaeda. This is said to come from communication intercepts. [Gunaratna, 2003, pp. 267] Hamzah Haz, vice president of Indonesia from July 2001 to October 2004, calls himself “very close” to Islamist militant leaders such as Abu Bakar Bashir, the alleged spiritual leader of the al-Qaeda affiliate Jemaah Islamiyah. But there have been no reports linking him to al-Qaeda (see July 23, 2001-October 20, 2004).

RaptureReady logo. [Source: RaptureReady (.com)]In the days after the 9/11 attacks, RaptureReady.com, a web site devoted to the study and predictions of Biblical “end times,” hits a new high of 182 on its “Rapture Index.” The site calls this measure the “Dow Jones Industrial Average of end time activity.” A score of 145 is labeled “Fasten Your Seat Belts.” [Unger, 2007, pp. 218]

Soon after September 11, a concerted effort begins to pin the blame for the attacks on Saddam Hussein. Retired General Wesley Clark will later say on NBC’s Meet the Press in June 2003 and in a letter published by the New York Times that “immediately after 9/11” there was a “concerted effort… to pin 9/11 and the terrorism problem on Saddam Hussein” and use the attacks as an excuse to go after the Iraqi dictator. When asked by NBC’s Tim Russert, who was behind the concerted effort, Clark will respond: “Well, it came from the White House, it came from people around the White House. It came from all over.” Clark also says, “I got a call on 9/11. I was on CNN, and I got a call at my home saying, ‘You got to say this is connected. This is state-sponsored terrorism. This has to be connected to Saddam Hussein.’ I said, ‘But—I’m willing to say it, but what’s your evidence?’ And I never got any evidence.” He says the phone call came from a Middle Eastern think tank outside of the country. [MSNBC, 6/15/2003; Clark, 7/18/2003]

Prominent conservative and former Reagan administration official William Bennett tells CNN that, in light of the 9/11 attacks, the US is locked in “a struggle between good and evil.” Congress must immediately declare war on what he calls “militant Islam,” with “overwhelming force.” Bennett says the US must target Lebanon, Libya, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and China as targets for attack. In 2003, fellow conservative Pat Buchanan will write: “Not, however, Afghanistan, the sanctuary of Osama [bin Laden]‘s terrorists. How did Bennett know which nations must be smashed before he had any idea who attacked us?” [American Conservative, 3/24/2003]

Around 2:30 a.m., the FBI arrives at Huffman Aviation flight school in Venice, Florida, inquiring about suspected hijackers Mohamed Atta and Marwan Alshehhi, who attended the school (see July 6-December 19, 2000). Huffman Aviation has around 200 students, about half of them foreigners. The FBI takes away all its records on former students, including photocopies of Atta and Alshehhi’s passports, as well as two computers. [Charlotte Sun, 9/12/2001; New York Times, 9/13/2001; US Congress, 3/19/2002] Students at another Florida flight school say the FBI arrived at their school within hours of the attacks (see September 11, 2001).

The Defense Protective Service (DPS)—the law enforcement agency that guards the Pentagon—arrests three people at the Pentagon who are dressed in firefighting gear but are not firefighters. Further details of who these people are and why they are at the Pentagon are unstated. John Jester, the chief of the DPS, later reflects: “When you have a major event, certain people are like moths around a light bulb. They come to the scene as thrill seekers.” Reportedly, incident command, DPS, and FBI officials are worried by the “absence of an effective identification system to control the large number of people that [are passing] through the outer perimeter fence to support firefighting and recovery operations” at the Pentagon. [Goldberg et al., 2007, pp. 170]

The FBI launches an internal investigation into its failings before 9/11, but will not publicize the probe’s course or findings. The only thing known about the investigation is that two FBI agents who were detailed to Alec Station, the CIA’s bin Laden unit, before 9/11 are interviewed by the investigators and give a different account of their conduct to the version they provide to the Justice Department’s inspector general. The two agents, Doug Miller and Mark Rossini, were involved in the blocking of a CIA cable to the FBI about 9/11 hijacker Khalid Almihdhar (see 9:30 a.m. - 4:00 p.m. January 5, 2000 and January 6, 2000) and falsely claimed to the inspector general that they could recall nothing about this (see (February 12, 2004)). However, they tell the internal investigation the truth, that they were ordered by Alec Station’s deputy chief, Tom Wilshire, and another CIA officer to withhold the cable from the FBI. [Congressional Quarterly, 10/1/2008]

FAA personnel are too busy after 9/11 to complete an after-action report on the agency’s response to the terrorist attacks. Mike Morse, an FAA national security coordination staffer, will later tell the 9/11 Commission: “No comprehensive after-action report was ever completed by the FAA. Everyone was working day and night on emergency measures. The potential for other attacks was real.” The official initially tasked with writing the report is Larry Bruno, the FAA’s security regulatory manager. But, according to Morse, Bruno finds it “impossible because people could not make time to cooperate.” Willie Gripper, the deputy director of civil aviation security operations at FAA headquarters, then tasks Morse with the assignment, but Morse says that accomplishing the task will require that higher level officials make it a priority. An attempt is made to complete a report around March or April 2002, but the creation of the Transportation Security Administration is underway at the time, and so it is “increasingly difficult to get all of the [FAA] principals in one place to discuss what happened and generate ‘lessons learned,’” according to Morse. [9/11 Commission, 9/15/2003, pp. 10 ; 9/11 Commission, 5/5/2004, pp. 5-6 ]

Fort Myer. [Source: US Army]At 6:00 a.m., the FBI opens the Joint Operations Center (JOC) for coordinating the emergency response to the Pentagon attack. The JOC is located in a community center at Fort Myer, an army base 1.5 miles northwest of the Pentagon, and is commanded by FBI Special Agent in Charge Timothy Bereznay. [US Department of Health and Human Services, 7/2002, pp. A23 and A28 ; Goldberg et al., 2007, pp. 161] The US government’s January 2001 Interagency Domestic Terrorism Concept of Operations Plan (CONPLAN) allocated to the FBI responsibility for activating a JOC to coordinate the activities of federal departments and agencies in response to terrorist attacks. All the government organizations responding to the Pentagon attack are expected to assign a senior representative with decision-making authority to the JOC. There are 26 such representatives in all. Because many of the responding agencies are unfamiliar with the functions of the JOC, there is initially “considerable confusion” after it opens. [US Government, 1/2001; US Department of Health and Human Services, 7/2002, pp. C49 and C51 ; Goldberg et al., 2007, pp. 161] The FBI has been able to set up the JOC particularly quickly as a result of its preparations for the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, scheduled to take place in Washington at the end of September (see 8:30 a.m. September 11, 2001). Months previously, the FBI surveyed regional sites and chose Fort Myer as the location to coordinate the law enforcement response to any violent protests at that event. [Guardian, 9/14/2001; Goldberg et al., 2007, pp. 161]

After concluding a National Security Council meeting (see September 12, 2001), President Bush continues meeting with about six top principal cabinet members. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld poses the question, “Do we focus on bin Laden and al-Qaeda or terrorism more broadly?” Secretary of State Colin Powell suggests the US should focus on terrorism generally, but focus first on al-Qaeda. Vice President Cheney brings up the issue of state sponsorship. “To the extent we define our task broadly, including those who support terrorism, then we get at states. And it’s easier to find them than it is to find bin Laden.” President Bush concludes, “Start with bin Laden, which Americans expect. And then if we succeed, we’ve struck a huge blow and can move forward.” He called the terrorism threat “a cancer” and adds, “We don’t want to define [it] too broadly for the average man to understand.” This is according to journalist Bob Woodward, who later interviews some participants in the meeting. [Woodward, 2002, pp. 43] The main alleged state sponsor that interests many top Bush officials is Iraq. For instance, five days later Bush will state he believes Iraq was involved in the 9/11 attacks, but that an attack on Iraq will have to wait (see September 17, 2001).

During a National Security Council meeting, FBI Director Robert Mueller begins to describe the investigation under way to identify the 9/11 hijackers. According to journalist Bob Woodward, “He said it was essential not to taint any evidence so that if accomplices were arrested, they could be convicted.” But Attorney General John Ashcroft interrupts. Woodward will paraphrase Ashcroft saying, “The chief mission of US law enforcement… is to stop another attack and apprehend any accomplices or terrorists before they hit us again. If we can’t bring them to trial, so be it.” Woodward will comment, “Now, Ashcroft was saying, the focus of the FBI and the Justice Department should change from prosecution to prevention, a radical shift in priorities.” President Bush is at the meeting and apparently does not challenge Ashcroft’s suggestion. [Woodward, 2002, pp. 42-43]

The Wall Street Journal editorial page reacts to the 9/11 attacks by advocating that the US attack “terrorist camps in Syria, Sudan, Libya, and Algeria, and perhaps even in parts of Egypt.” [American Conservative, 3/24/2003]

Secretary of State Colin Powell states, “In the first 24 hours of analysis, I have not seen any evidence that there was a specific signal that we missed.… In this case, we did not have intelligence of anything of this scope or magnitude.” [Washington File, 9/12/2001]

The government’s initial response to the 9/11 attacks is that it had no evidence whatsoever that bin Laden planned an attack in the US. “There was a ton of stuff, but it all pointed to an attack abroad,” says one official. Furthermore, in the 24 hours after the attack, investigators would have been searching through “mountains of information.” However, “the vast electronic ‘take’ on bin Laden, said officials who requested anonymity, contained no hints of a pending terror campaign in the United States itself, no orders to subordinates, no electronic fund transfers, no reports from underlings on their surveillance of the airports in Boston, Newark, and Washington.” [Miami Herald, 9/12/2001]

The US is not interested in help from a high-level Taliban informant. Mullah Mohammed Khaksar was the Taliban’s intelligence minister and is currently their deputy interior minister. He is in charge of security in the Afghan capital of Kabul and regularly meets with other high ranking Taliban leaders. But since 1997, he has also been secretly providing a steady stream of intelligence to the Northern Alliance, the enemies of the Taliban. Further, he had offered to help the US defeat the Taliban, and several times before 9/11 CIA agents disguised as journalists visited him to solicit inside information (see April 1999). [Washington Post, 11/30/2001] However, in the weeks after 9/11, he passes letters to get in contact with US intelligence, but never hears back from them. Time magazine will later report, “Khaksar said he was ready to pass on information that might lead to the capture of the fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Omar and to some al-Qaeda hideouts in Afghanistan. But he waited days, weeks, months, and nobody contacted him.” [Time, 2/25/2002] Finally in late November 2001, he will publicly defect to the Northern Alliance, thus ending his ability to get real-time information on the movements of Omar and others. [Knight Ridder, 11/29/2001] The US will continue to remain uninterested in what Khaksar has to say (see February 25, 2002).

After arriving at the Pentagon on September 11 (see 9:42 a.m. September 11, 2001), the FBI is involved in removing bodies and body parts from the crash site. It works closely with Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Urban Search and Rescue (US&R) teams and fire department Technical Rescue Teams (TRT). Members of these teams hunt through the debris, searching for survivors. When they find bodies or body parts, they call upon the FBI to photograph, number, and tag these remains. [US Department of Health and Human Services, 7/2002, pp. C-54 ] Though the Flight 77 passengers had been in the back of the plane at the time of the crash, most of their remains are found deep inside the building, near the end of the area traveled by the aircraft debris. Conversely, the remains of the suspected hijackers, who would have been at the front of the plane, are found relatively close to the front of the building, where the plane first impacted it. (However, these remains will be identified as belonging to the hijackers only through a process of elimination, as they do not match DNA samples of the victims of the attack.) According to the American Society of Civil Engineers’ Pentagon Building Performance Report, the location of the remains as such indicates that “the front of the aircraft disintegrated essentially upon impact but, in the process, opened up a hole allowing the trailing portions of the fuselage to pass into the building.” Journalist Steve Vogel concludes, “The fuselage in essence turned inside out as it passed through the Pentagon.” The search and rescue operations at the Pentagon come to an end on the morning of September 22, and the Arlington County Fire Department then turns command of the crash site over to the FBI. [Washington Post, 11/21/2001; Mlakar et al., 1/2003, pp. 40 ; Vogel, 2007, pp. 432 and 467]

A C-17. [Source: Jeff Fisher / US Air Force]A C-17 cargo plane flies three Predator drones, along with the personnel and equipment needed to operate them, from California to Andrews Air Force Base, just outside Washington, DC, where they will be ready to be deployed over Afghanistan. [Whittle, 2011, pp. 25 ; Grimes, 2014, pp. 334-335; Whittle, 2014, pp. 239-242] Around the time of the attack on the Pentagon on September 11, Colonel Bill Grimes, director of a highly secretive Air Force program called Big Safari, was called by an officer at Air Force headquarters and asked what had to be done to get three Predators ready for use in the airspace over Afghanistan (see (Shortly Before 9:37 a.m.) September 11, 2001). [Whittle, 2014, pp. 235] After that call, Grimes phoned members of his team in California and told them to prepare to deploy. [Whittle, 2011, pp. 25 ; Grimes, 2014, pp. 334] Meanwhile, James Clark, a retired colonel who now works as a civilian for the Air Force, arranged, with some assistance from the CIA, for a C-17 to carry three Predators across the US while the nation’s airspace is shut down in response to the 9/11 attacks. [Whittle, 2014, pp. 240]Cargo Plane Starts Its Journey within 24 Hours of the Attacks - The C-17 begins its journey to Andrews Air Force Base at Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake in California. After being called by Grimes on the morning of September 11, Major Mark Mattoon, who had been running flight tests with the Predator at China Lake, talked to the commanding admiral at the base and requested permission for a C-17 to land. He said the aircraft would be arriving at China Lake in five hours, which means it would have landed there early that afternoon. [Grimes, 2014, pp. 334; Whittle, 2014, pp. 235] However, the C-17 only leaves the base on the morning of September 12. It begins its journey across America “barely 24 hours after the attacks of 9/11,” according to journalist and author Richard Whittle. Plane Stops Off at Several Bases - The plane stops off at an airfield in Palmdale, California, where additional equipment and personnel get on board. It stops again at Redstone Arsenal, an Army base in Alabama. There, about a dozen AGM-114 Hellfire missiles are loaded onto it. The plane stops once more at Charleston Air Force Base in South Carolina. It arrives there at 4:00 a.m. on the morning of September 13 and remains on the ground for 20 hours. While at the base, it undergoes inspection, maintenance, and refueling. Plane Arrives near Washington on September 14 - The plane’s next stop is Andrews Air Force Base, about 10 miles from Washington. It arrives there at 1:30 a.m. on the morning of September 14. On board, apart from the Hellfire missiles, are three disassembled Predators, along with a flight control console and a portable C-band radio antenna, which a small team could use to get the drones in and out of the air from almost any airfield in the world. A small number of experts who are needed to operate the Predators also travel from California to Andrews Air Force Base on the C-17. [Grimes, 2014, pp. 334-335; Whittle, 2014, pp. 239-242] The first Predator mission over Afghanistan will take place on September 18 and on October 7, the first day of the war in Afghanistan, the first armed Predator mission will be flown (see September 18-October 7, 2001 and October 7, 2001). [9/11 Commission, 3/24/2004 ; Grimes, 2014, pp. 335]

David Childs. [Source: Publicity photo]Developer Larry Silverstein, who recently took over the lease of the World Trade Center (see July 24, 2001), later tells journalist Steven Brill that he’d been so sickened by the destruction on 9/11, and by the deaths of four of his employees in the WTC, that he did not focus on insurance or financial matters until “perhaps two weeks later.” But according to two people who call him this morning to offer their sympathy, Silverstein soon changes the subject: “He had talked to his lawyers… and he had a clear legal strategy mapped out. They were going to prove, Silverstein told one of the callers, that the way his insurance policies were written the two planes crashing into the two towers had been two different ‘occurrences,’ not part of the same event. That would give him more than $7 billion to rebuild, instead of the $3.55 billion that his insurance policy said was the maximum for one ‘occurrence.’ And rebuild was just what he was going to do, he vowed.” By mid-morning, he calls his architect David Childs, and instructs him to start sketching out a plan for a new building. He tells Childs to plan to build the exact same area of office space as has been destroyed. In fact, Silverstein’s lawyers claim the developer had been on the phone to them on the evening of 9/11, wondering “whether his insurance policies could be read in a way that would construe the attacks as two separate, insurable incidents rather than one.” [Brill, 2003, pp. 18-19 and 39-40; Real Deal, 1/2004] Yet Jerome Hauer, the former director of New York’s Office of Emergency Management, had gone to Silverstein’s office on 9/11, and later claims that Silverstein’s primary concern that day had been his employees, and whether they had gotten out of the WTC. “Larry was absolutely devastated,” he says. [Weiss, 2003, pp. 374] Following a lengthy legal dispute, Silverstein will eventually receive $4.55 billion in insurance payouts for the destruction of the WTC (see May 23, 2007). [New York Post, 5/24/2007]

Regarding President Bush’s decision not to return to Washington immediately after the 9/11 attacks, historian Robert Dallek tells a USA Today reporter: “Frankly, President Bush made an initial mistake. The president’s place is back in Washington” (see (9:45 a.m.) September 11, 2001, (9:45 a.m.-9:56 a.m.) September 11, 2001, and 10:02 a.m. September 11, 2001). Presidential historian Douglas Brinkley adds, “If I were Bush, I’d be in the White House right now, saying, ‘We took a hit at the Pentagon and had a disaster in New York, but the government of the United States is unscathed by this and we’re going to march forward.’” When Dallek’s words appear in print, White House political adviser Karl Rove calls Dallek to inform him that Bush did not return to Washington right away because of security threats to the White House (see (9:45 a.m.) September 11, 2001) and Air Force One (see (10:32 a.m.) September 11, 2001 and (4:00 p.m.) September 11, 2001). Rove provides no substantiation for his claims, and media critic Eric Alterman later asks, “If you think Air Force One is to be attacked (see (11:29 a.m.) September 11, 2001), why go up in Air Force One?” Looking back on Dallek’s assessment, New York Times columnist Frank Rich later writes, “September 11 was the first time since the British set fire to the White House in 1814 that a president abandoned the capital for security reasons.” [USA Today, 9/12/2001; Rich, 2006, pp. 24-25]

President Bush speaking with Karl Rove and Ari Fleischer on Air Force One on September 11. [Source: George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum]Bush administration officials give differing accounts about whether a threat was made against Air Force One, the president’s plane, on September 11. [Washington Post, 9/27/2001; Slate, 9/28/2001; Wall Street Journal, 3/22/2004 ] The White House reportedly received an anonymous phone call at around 10:30 a.m. on September 11 in which the caller said Air Force One would be the next terrorist target and used code words indicating they had inside information about government procedures (see (10:30 a.m.) September 11, 2001). Vice President Dick Cheney promptly phoned President Bush on Air Force One and told him about the threat (see (10:32 a.m.) September 11, 2001). [New York Times, 9/13/2001; Woodward, 2002, pp. 18; 9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 554]Press Secretary Reveals Threat during News Briefing - White House press secretary Ari Fleischer reveals the existence of the threat on September 12, after conferring with Cheney and White House counselor Karen Hughes about whether the administration should respond to criticisms of Bush’s failure to return to Washington, DC, immediately after the previous day’s attacks. Hughes advises Fleischer to mention the threat during his press briefing on this day. [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 554; Fleischer, 2005, pp. 157] Fleischer therefore says in the briefing, “[W]e have specific and credible information that the White House and Air Force One were also intended targets of these attacks.” He says the threat against the president’s plane led to the decision to take Bush to Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska (see 2:50 p.m. September 11, 2001) and was one of the reasons why Bush did not head back to Washington right away in response to the attacks. [White House, 9/12/2001]Cheney Recalls 'Credible Threat' - On September 16, Cheney similarly tells NBC’s Meet the Press, “We received a threat to Air Force One,” and adds, “I think it was a credible threat, enough for the Secret Service to bring it to me.” [Meet the Press, 9/16/2001] And later in the month, White House adviser Karl Rove, who was with Bush on Air Force One on September 11, recalls that those on the president’s plane were informed of “a specific threat made to Air Force One,” which was a “declaration that Air Force One was a target.” [New Yorker, 9/25/2001]Unnamed Officials Doubt whether Threat Was Made - Other officials, however, contradict these accounts. Near the end of September, CBS News reports that the phone call in which the threat was reportedly made “simply never happened.” It says that, according to unnamed sources, “White House staffers apparently misunderstood comments made by their security detail.” [Slate, 9/28/2001] And some unnamed Bush administration officials tell the Associated Press that “they now doubt whether there was actually a call made threatening Air Force One.” The officials say they “have been unsuccessful in trying to track down whether there was such a call, though officials still maintain they were told of a telephone threat [on] September 11 and kept Bush away from Washington for hours because of it.” [Associated Press, 9/26/2001] Fleischer will later recall that he learns, weeks after publicly revealing the existence of the supposed threat against Air Force One, “that the threat was unfounded.” [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 554] “I learned it was a mistake from the press,” he will say, “who had been tipped by someone who knew.” [Fleischer, 2005, pp. 158]Threat Was 'Almost Surely Bogus' - At the start of November, when asked about the alleged call in which Air Force One was threatened, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice says: “I don’t know if it was a crank call or a real threat. I don’t think we’re going to ever know.” [White House, 11/1/2001] And at the end of 2001, Newsweek reports that the reported threat to Air Force One has been determined to be “almost surely bogus,” although it adds, “White House officials say they do not know where it came from.” [Newsweek, 12/30/2001] White House spokesman Dan Bartlett says in 2004 that “there hadn’t been any actual threat” against Air Force One on September 11. Word of a threat, he says, “resulted from confusion in the White House bunker, as multiple conversations went on simultaneously.” Around the same time, however, Cheney’s office says it still cannot rule out that a threat to Air Force One was made. [Wall Street Journal, 3/22/2004 ]

The Saudi passport of Saeed Alghamdi, said to be discovered in the wreckage of Flight 93. [Source: FBI]According to the 9/11 Commission, the passports of two hijackers are discovered in the wreckage of Flight 93. One passport, belonging to Saeed Alghamdi, is damaged but still readable. The other passport, belonging to Ziad Jarrah, is burned most of the way through, but part of his photograph is still visible. In addition, the passport of hijacker Abdulaziz Alomari is recovered because apparently it was put in Mohamed Atta’s luggage and the luggage did not get put on the flight Alomari and Atta were hijacking before it took off (see September 11-13, 2001). The recovery of these passports will not be made public at the time and will only be mentioned in passing in 2004 by the 9/11 Commission. A fourth passport, that of Satam Al Suqami, was also recovered on a street near the WTC (see After 8:46 a.m. September 11, 2001). That did become immediate news and caused skepticism by many who wondered how a paper document could survive such a crash (see After 8:46 a.m. September 11, 2001). [9/11 Commission, 1/26/2004]

FBI Special Agent John Adams, who is now in charge of evidence recovery at the Pentagon during the daytime, addresses how the FBI should deal with the physical evidence at the crash site. [Creed and Newman, 2008, pp. 347 and 351] As the Pentagon is a crime scene, the FBI is responsible for collecting and documenting evidence there. [Creed and Newman, 2008, pp. 177] Agents are still carefully gathering together wreckage, but there is an overwhelming amount of it to deal with. Several FBI supervisors convene and discuss what the bureau should be recovering. One of them says every airplane part is significant and needs to be treated as valuable evidence. But Adams counters: “That can’t be. We know what happened here. Do we really need to collect every piece of the airplane?” Adams goes over to some National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) crash experts at the site, who are responsible for determining what happened to Flight 77. When he asks them, “Do you guys want pieces of the plane?” an NTSB official responds: “No, it’s clear what happened here. We don’t need pieces of the wings and stuff like that. But we do need the black boxes.” [Creed and Newman, 2008, pp. 351-352]

Following the attacks, there is no agreement on the speed with which the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center collapsed on 9/11 (see 9:59 a.m. September 11, 2001 and 10:28 a.m. September 11, 2001). The 9/11 Commission says that the South Tower collapsed in “ten seconds” and the National Institute of Standards and Technology says that tops of the buildings came down “essentially in free fall.” [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 305; National Institute of Standards and Technology, 9/2005, pp. 146] In the dispute over the reason for the WTC’s collapse after 9/11, it is claimed that, if the towers fell in ten seconds, then this is evidence they were destroyed by explosives. For example, David Ray Griffin, a theologian and outspoken critic of commission’s report, writes, “For a 1,300-foot building, however, ten seconds is almost free-fall speed. But if each floor produced just a little resistance, so that breaking through each one took half a second, the collapse of all those floors—80 or 95 of them—would have taken 40 to 47 seconds. Can we really believe that the upper part of the buildings encountered virtually no resistance from the lower part?” [Griffin, 2004, pp. 16] But according to Canadian scientist Frank Greening, who studies the Twin Towers’ collapse, the freefall time would be about 9.6 seconds, and he calculates that it takes longer for the buildings to fall—twelve to thirteen and a half seconds—and states this does not indicate that explosives were used. [Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 8/25/2005]

Roxanne Sullivan is out shopping when Flight 93 crashes just a quarter of a mile from where she lives. Heading home, she is stopped by police and has to convince them to allow her to her house. She is told she can only have two hours there to pack her bags, and then must leave. Two hours later, the police visit and say she can stay. But, according to Sullivan, they tell her she and her husband “must check in and out each time we left. No one was allowed to visit us, nor could we visit others in the area. The rules had been set and would remain in force for two weeks. We could not go down to the site, even though our property line is adjacent to the crash site property.” No explanation is reported as to why they are placed under this “house arrest.” [McCall, 2002, pp. 39-40; Daily Telegraph, 3/28/2003; Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, 7/4/2004]

Ronald Hamburger, a member of NIST’s WTC team and advocate of the ‘piledriver’ theory. [Source: National Council of Structural Engineers' Associations]After 9/11, the scientists investigating the WTC collapse give very different figures for the buildings’ weight. Some sources say that each building weighed 500,000 tons. For example, MIT professor Thomas Eager writes, “The total weight of each tower was about 500,000 t.” [Scientific American, 10/9/2001; Eagar and Musso, 12/2001; Frank Greening, 2/16/2006, pp. 23 ; PBS, 8/2006] However, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) states that the buildings weighed only 250,000 tons each. [National Institute of Standards and Technology, 9/2005, pp. 32] One theory explaining the building’s total collapse is that the upper section acts as a “piledriver” and smashes through the floors below it. [BBC, 9/13/2001; Stanford Report, 12/5/2001] The heavier the upper block above the impact zone, the more likely it is to be able to destroy the other floors as it falls.

Steel beams from the WTC were already being removed and recycled on September 20, 2001. [Source: Associated Press]In the month following 9/11, a significant amount of the steel debris from the WTC collapses is removed from the rubble pile, cut into smaller sections, and either melted at a recycling plant or shipped out of the US. [US Congress, 3/6/2002] Each of the Twin Towers contained 78,000 tons of recyclable steel. Much of this is shipped to India, China, and other Asian countries, where it will be melted down and reprocessed into new steel products. Asian companies are able to purchase the steel for just $120 per ton, compared, for example, to a usual average price of $150 per ton in China. Industry officials estimate that selling off the steel and other metals from the WTC for recycling could net a few tens of million dollars. [New York Times, 10/9/2001; Reuters, 1/21/2002; Reuters, 1/22/2002; Eastday, 1/24/2002; CorpWatch, 2/6/2002] 9/11 victims’ families and some engineers are angered at the decision to quickly discard the steel, believing it should be examined to help determine how the towers collapsed. A respected fire fighting trade magazine comments, “We are literally treating the steel removed from the site like garbage, not like crucial fire scene evidence.” [Fire Engineering, 1/2002] Rep. Joseph Crowley (D-NY) will later call the loss of this evidence “borderline criminal.” By March 2002, 150 pieces of steel from the WTC debris will have been identified by engineers for use in future investigations (see March 6, 2002). [Federal Emergency Management Agency, 5/1/2002, pp. D-13] A study by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which commences in August 2002 [National Institute of Standards and Technology, 8/21/2002; Associated Press, 8/21/2002] , will have 236 pieces of recovered steel available to it. Of these, 229 pieces are from WTC 1 and 2, representing “roughly 0.25 percent to 0.5 percent of the 200,000 tons of structural steel used in the construction of the two towers.” [National Institute of Standards and Technology, 9/2005, pp. 85 ] New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg defends the decision to quickly get rid of the WTC steel, saying, “If you want to take a look at the construction methods and the design, that’s in this day and age what computers do. Just looking at a piece of metal generally doesn’t tell you anything.” Officials in the mayor’s office decline to reply to requests by the New York Times regarding who decided to have the steel recycled. [New York Times, 12/25/2001; Eastday, 1/24/2002]

Martin Gilbertson. [Source: BBC]On September 12, 2001, Martin Gilbertson attends a party in Beeston, a neighborhood in Leeds, Britain, where a group of Muslim youths are celebrating the 9/11 attacks that took place the day before. Gilbertson is introduced to three men who run the Iqra Islamic bookshop and some related establishments in Beeston. Their leader appears to be Martin McDaid, a former Royal Marine who converted to Islam and changed his name to Adbullah Mohammed. Gilbertson, a former Hell’s Angel and rock and roll roadie, is not Muslim, but McDaid and the others ask if he can instruct them in website production. Over the next two years, Gilbertson ends up getting paid to do the production work for them himself, as well as repairing their computers and setting up encryptions to protect their computers from being monitored. Gets to Know 7/7 Bombers - Two of the future 7/7 London bombers, Mohammad Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer, live in Beeston and regularly visit the Iqra bookshop. Gilbertson comes to know them well. But after spending time editing video footage meant to serve as radical Islamist recruiting propaganda DVDs, he becomes alarmed at the content and decides to go to the police. Informs Police - In October 2003, he goes to the local police to warn them about the circle of radical Islamists he is working for. For instance, he warns that McDaid is “ranting and raving” about “jihad.” He is told to send his material to the anti-terrorist squad at the West Yorkshire police headquarters instead. So he sends them a package containing some of the DVDs he helped make, a contact number, a list of names (including Tanweer and Khan), and details about their e-mail traffic. He leaves the area some months later and loses contact with the group. He never hears back, until he goes to the police again shortly after the 7/7 bombings. Police Fail to Say If They Were Informed - A West Yorkshire police spokesman will later say: “It’s going to be almost impossible to trace what happened to a specific item of mail. We don’t have an anti-terrorist squad, and there’s no way of saying to where it might have gone from the mailroom. We get all sorts of material on extremist groups—but it’s impossible to say whether this made its way into the intelligence system, whether it was discounted as low-level intelligence or whether it was acted upon in some way.” Talk about Dying for the Cause - Gilbertson will later say that he did not hear any specific plans for suicide bombing. But an associate of his will later say: “Some people made it clear they had no objection to dying for their cause. They didn’t see it as suicide, and didn’t talk much about martyrdom. They saw the suicide bomb as the only weapon they had in a war in which they were outgunned and overpowered.” [Guardian, 6/24/2006]Police Raid - Gilbertson will later tell the BBC: “I know that other people were talking to the police at the same time. There were many people who were voicing their concerns about what was happening in Beeston. But nobody would listen.” But he also believes that police raided the Iqra bookshop soon after he mailed his warning. He says that in early 2004, he was asked to repair a laptop belonging to one of the people he had warned the police about, and was told the laptop had been damaged after being seized by police. He says that he thought, “Oh, the police listened to me.” [BBC, 5/9/2007]

A chunk of hot metal being removed from the North Tower rubble about eight weeks after 9/11.
[Source: Frank Silecchia]In the weeks and months after 9/11, numerous individuals report seeing molten metal in the remains of the World Trade Center: Ken Holden, who is involved with the organizing of demolition, excavation, and debris removal operations at Ground Zero, will later tell the 9/11 Commission, “Underground, it was still so hot that molten metal dripped down the sides of the wall from [WTC] Building 6.” [9/11 Commission, 4/1/2003] William Langewiesche, the only journalist to have unrestricted access to Ground Zero during the cleanup operation, will describe, “[I]n the early days, the streams of molten metal that leaked from the hot cores and flowed down broken walls inside the foundation hole.” [Langewiesche, 2002, pp. 32] Leslie Robertson, one of the structural engineers responsible for the design of the WTC, describes fires still burning and molten steel still running 21 days after the attacks. [SEAU News, 10/2001 ] Alison Geyh, who heads a team of scientists studying the potential health effects of 9/11, reports: “Fires are still actively burning and the smoke is very intense. In some pockets now being uncovered, they are finding molten steel.” [Johns Hopkins Public Health Magazine, 2001] Ron Burger, a public health advisor who arrives at Ground Zero on September 12, says that “feeling the heat” and “seeing the molten steel” there reminds him of a volcano. [National Environmental Health Association, 9/2003, pp. 40 ] Paramedic Lee Turner arrives at the World Trade Center site on September 12 as a member of a federal urban search and rescue squad. While at Ground Zero, he goes “down crumpled stairwells to the subway, five levels below ground.” There, he reportedly sees, “in the darkness a distant, pinkish glow—molten metal dripping from a beam.” [US News and World Report, 9/12/2002] According to a member of New York Air National Guard’s 109th Air Wing, who is at Ground Zero from September 22 to October 6: “One fireman told us that there was still molten steel at the heart of the towers’ remains. Firemen sprayed water to cool the debris down but the heat remained intense enough at the surface to melt their boots.” [National Guard Magazine, 12/2001] New York firefighters will recall “heat so intense they encountered rivers of molten steel.” [New York Post, 3/3/2004] As late as five months after the attacks, in February 2002, firefighter Joe O’Toole sees a steel beam being lifted from deep underground at Ground Zero, which, he says, “was dripping from the molten steel.” [Knight Ridder, 5/29/2002]Steven E. Jones, a physics professor from Utah, will claim this molten metal is “direct evidence for the use of high-temperature explosives, such as thermite,” used to deliberately bring down the WTC towers. [MSNBC, 11/16/2005] He will say that without explosives, a falling building would have “insufficient directed energy to result in melting of large quantities of metal.” [Deseret Morning News, 11/10/2005] There will be no mention whatsoever of the molten metal in the official reports by FEMA, NIST, or the 9/11 Commission. [Federal Emergency Management Agency, 5/1/2002; 9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004; National Institute of Standards and Technology, 9/2005] But Dr. Frank Gayle, who leads the steel forensics aspects of NIST’s investigation of the WTC collapses, will be quoted as saying: “Your gut reaction would be the jet fuel is what made the fire so very intense, a lot of people figured that’s what melted the steel. Indeed it didn’t, the steel did not melt.” [ABC News 7 (New York), 2/7/2004] As well as the reports of molten metal, data collected by NASA in the days after 9/11 finds dozens of “hot spots” (some over 1,300 degrees) at Ground Zero (see September 16-23, 2001).

At the time of 9/11, the FBI’s Saudi Arabia office was comprised of only legal attache Wilfred Rattigan and his assistant Gamal Abdel-Hafiz. Abdel-Hafiz, the FBI’s only Muslim agent at the time, had been appointed to the position in February 2001 despite a controversy with his FBI work back in the US (see Early 1999-March 21, 2000). Some fellow FBI agents accused him of refusing to secretly record conversations with Muslim suspects. Time will report, “The FBI sent reinforcements [to the Saudi Arabian office] within two weeks of 9/11, but it appears that the bureau’s team never got on top of the thousands of leads flowing in from the US and Saudi governments.… According to several former employees of the US embassy in Riyadh, the FBI legal attache’s office housed within the embassy was often in disarray during the months that followed 9/11. When an FBI supervisor arrived [nearly a year after 9/11] to clean up the mess, she found a mountain of paper and, for security reasons, ordered wholesale shredding that resulted in the destruction of unprocessed documents relating to the 9/11 investigations.” In June 2005, the Senate Judiciary Committee will begin investigating allegations that the FBI’s Saudi office was “delinquent in pursuing thousands of leads” related to 9/11. Piles of time-sensitive leads still had not been followed up when the supervisor arrives. The FBI will claim that the thousands of shredded documents were duplicated elsewhere. But the Judiciary Committee will assert some material is lost. One employee will claim that some of the lost information “was leads, suspicious-activity material, information on airline pilots.” Rattigan, who has converted to Islam, later will sue the FBI for discrimination and will claim that the FBI refused to provide him with adequate resources to cope with the workload after 9/11. [Frontline, 10/16/2003; Time, 6/27/2005]

FBI agent Robert Wright will later claim that the FBI takes extraordinary efforts to gag him in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. According to Wright, “On September the 11th, as I watched the World Trade Center towers burn, I did not initially share the same feelings of surprise and shock and dismay most Americans felt. I just thought to myself, ‘It has begun.’” On the afternoon of 9/11, he claims that he is called by reporters from the New York Times and 60 Minutes who already are aware of his issues with FBI management (see June 9, 2001-July 10, 2001). They ask if he would be willing to go public with his story. He declines. “I’m confident if I had gone public at that time I would have been fired. I realized my termination would only aid the FBI by allowing management to claim I was simply a former employee who was disgruntled over his termination.” Over the next few days, his former supervisor prohibits him from working with the 9/11 investigation. He is not allowed to answer any incoming telephone calls from the general public. The FBI prohibits him from publishing his recently completed book on FBI failures (see May 9, 2002). His lawyers contact a congressman who invites him to come to Washington and present his information to Congress. Wright is immediately prohibited from traveling outside of Chicago without FBI approval. Larry Klayman, one of two lawyers now representing Wright, later says he calls the Justice Department a few days after 9/11 and asks that Wright be allowed to present his issues to Attorney General John Ashcroft. Klayman claims he receives a reply from Michael Chertoff, then head of the Criminal division, who refuses to meet with Wright and says, “We are tired of conspiracy theories.” [Federal News Service, 5/30/2002; Federal News Service, 6/2/2003] On September 20, Wright’s legal representatives publish a list of 20 entities described as “Tax Exempt and Other Entities to Investigate Immediately.” The US will later shut down many of these entities. [Judicial Watch, 9/20/2001] The restrictions placed on Wright will largely continue to hold in the years afterwards. For instance, as of the end of 2005, his book still has not been approved for publication (see May 9, 2002).

In 2001, the US military budget is $293 billion a year. This is more than the combined budget of the next 15 largest militaries in the world. The US budget grows steadily in the years after 9/11, rising 40 percent to $427 billion in 2006. In 2008, it rises still further to $647 billion. This is considered about the same as what all the other countries of the world combined spend on military expenditures. [Rashid, 2008, pp. l]

Five Israeli men working for the Urban Moving Systems company had been arrested on 9/11 over suspicions that they had foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks (see 3:56 p.m. September 11, 2001), and now two more Israeli men working for the same company are arrested. The two men, Roy Barak and Motti Butbul, are driving one of their company’s moving vans in northern Pennsylvania when they are pulled over and arrested at around noon on September 12, 2001. Barak has overstayed his six-month visa and Butbul has no work permit. Both were in the Israeli military, Barak as an ex-paratrooper and Butful as a cook. Barak says he worked for Urban Moving Systems since the summer of 2000. The two are detained and sometimes kept in solitary confinement, but they later claim no ill treatment. Barak will later recall that US interrogators were most interested if he was connected to the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency. “They asked if someone sent me to the United States. They asked me if I worked in a moving company so I could monitor people’s movements.” He is given polygraph tests and claims to have satisfied his questioners except on the issue of who sent him to the US. On November 9, 2001, both are deported back to Israel. [Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 11/18/2001]

On September 12, the FBI in Miami issues a national bulletin for law enforcement agencies to be on the lookout for two cars connected with the 9/11 attacks. One is a red 1989 Pontiac registered to Mohamed Atta, presumably the car he bought in July 2000 (see Early July 2000). The other is an Oldsmobile Alero, leased from a company in Boca Raton, but this is located later in the day. [Washington Post, 9/12/2001; WESH 2 (Orlando/Daytona), 9/12/2001; CNN, 9/13/2001] About six weeks later, the Pontiac and another unspecified car that belonged to Atta and Marwan Alshehhi are found at a used car dealership in Tamarac, Florida, near Fort Lauderdale. The hijackers reportedly sold them a week before 9/11. [CNN, 10/26/2001; CNN, 10/28/2001; Miami Herald, 10/29/2001] Also around this time, Brad Warrick, the owner of a Florida company that rented cars to Atta (see August 6-September 9, 2001), reports finding about a teaspoon of an unidentified white powder in the trunk of a Ford Escort used by Atta in the days before the attacks. The FBI had impounded the car for two weeks after 9/11, and it has not been used since. An FBI spokeswoman says it is unlikely that agents would have missed a suspicious powder and suggests it could be fingerprinting dust. [Miami Herald, 10/29/2001; Reuters, 10/29/2001; Washington Post, 10/30/2001]

An Italian network of extremists that has been closely monitored by local authorities (see After April 2001) goes silent following 9/11, after which only one message is intercepted. The message, which says, “Congratulations for the USA,” is from an unknown militant to Abdelhalim Remadna, a leading radical based in Milan. Remadna is arrested on November 12 as he attempts to flee Italy. One of his associates, Yassin Chekkouri, is arrested on the same day. Remadna will be sentenced to eight years in prison, whereas Chekkouri will receive four. Mahmoud Es Sayed, one of their associates who apparently had some foreknowledge of 9/11 (see August 12, 2000 and September 4, 2001), escapes Italy some time in October, but is apparently killed at the battle of Tora Bora in December 2001. [Vidino, 2006, pp. 227-30]

Workers involved in the cleanup at Ground Zero find that much of the World Trade Center towers and their contents have been pulverized to dust. Charlie Vitchers, a construction superintendent who oversees the operation, says, “Apart from recoveries, we didn’t find one thing. Nothing. Not even a file cabinet.… As we were working on the pile, people were saying, ‘We’re not finding anything.’” He adds, “We weren’t going to find anything that was made out of wood. But you think we would have found a computer.… We found cell phones. We found shoes. But with regard to furniture, nothing, not a thing, not a desk, not a wall panel.… [F]or the most part there was nothing in the pile of debris that was recognizable.” Crane operator Bobby Gray says, “I don’t remember seeing carpeting or furniture. You’d think a metal file cabinet would make it, but I don’t remember seeing any, or phones, computers, none of that stuff. There were areas where there were no fires, which is not to say that they didn’t experience tremendous heat anyway. But even in areas that never burned we didn’t find anything.” He comments, “It was just so hard to comprehend that everything could have been pulverized to that extent. How do you pulverize carpet or filing cabinets?” [Stout, Vitchers, and Gray, 2006, pp. 143-144] According to Greg Meeker of the US Geological Survey, “Six million sq ft of masonry, 5 million sq ft of painted surfaces, 7 million sq ft of flooring, 600,000 sq ft of window glass, 200 elevators, and everything inside came down as dust” when the towers collapsed. “The only thing that didn’t get pulverized was the WTC towers’ 200,000 tons of structural steel.” [Chemical and Engineering News, 10/20/2003] Some people will later claim that this complete pulverization of the WTC is evidence of the towers having been brought down deliberately, using explosives. [Griffin, 2004, pp. 26; Griffin and Scott, 2006, pp. 46-47]

Kenneth Holden. [Source: Public domain]The New York City agency that oversees the Ground Zero cleanup operation following the 9/11 attacks is the Department of Design and Construction (DDC). [Glanz and Lipton, 2004, pp. 299] This obscure 1,300-man bureaucracy is normally responsible for overseeing municipal construction contracts, such as street repairs and jails. Its two top officials are Kenneth Holden and his lieutenant, Michael Burton. [Langewiesche, 2002, pp. 9] Burton is in lower Manhattan the morning of 9/11, instead of in his office in Queens, for a meeting at City Hall, just a few blocks away from the World Trade Center. [Engineering News-Record, 4/22/2002] That afternoon, he meets Holden and together they begin organizing the cleanup operation. By 5:30 p.m., the group of workers they have assembled gains permission to explore the WTC ruins. Under Burton’s direction, the team of “unbuilders” subsequently undertakes what journalist William Langewiesche describes as “the most aggressive possible schedule of demolition and debris removal.” Yet this appears to go against established procedures. On previous occasions the standard emergency response to natural or man-made disasters in the US, such as the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, was to rapidly nationalize efforts on the ground, under the direction of FEMA and the Army Corps of Engineers. [Langewiesche, 2002, pp. 66, 90, 94, 146] New York’s official emergency plans, which were written before 9/11, in fact require the Department of Sanitation to remove debris after a building collapse. A mid-level official who was involved in writing the latest plans mentions a week after 9/11 that she doesn’t even know quite what the DDC is. DDC’s only previous experiences of dealing with emergencies are a sinking EMS station in Brooklyn, caused by a water leak, and a structural failure at Yankee Stadium. According to Langewiesche, there is no specific moment when Holden and Burton are placed in charge of the Ground Zero cleanup effort. “Rather, there was a shift of power in their direction that was never quite formalized and, indeed, was unjustified by bureaucratic logic or political considerations.” Reportedly, at some point, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani made a “back-room decision to scrap the organization charts, to finesse the city’s own Office of Emergency Management (OEM), and to allow the DDC to proceed.” [Langewiesche, 2002, pp. 66, 88 and 118; Engineering News-Record, 4/22/2002] The Ground Zero cleanup operation officially ends in May 2002. [CBS News, 5/16/2002; New York Times, 5/29/2002]

In 2007, Los Angeles Times journalist Steven Braun, coauthor of a book on arms dealer Victor Bout, will claim, “We now know that one of Bout’s pals approached an American intelligence agent soon after the [9/11] attacks, suggesting that the US use his operation in arming the Northern Alliance against the Taliban and al-Qaeda. We don’t know for sure if the US accepted, but European intelligence officials believe a relationship blossomed. Within two years, Bout was flying for us not only in Iraq, but also in Afghanistan.” [Harper's, 7/26/2007] The Bout associate Braun refers to is Sanjivan Ruprah. In November 2001, Ruprah contacts an FBI agent and offers a deal. He and Bout will secretly help the US arm the Northern Alliance in its fight against the Taliban, and help the US gain information on al-Qaeda and other militant groups. He and Bout would provide and deliver many millions of dollars’ worth of weapons that the Northern Alliance has already told Bout that they need. It is unclear if the deal ever goes through, and some experts and officials doubt it. However, one European official will later say, “We know Bout had his aircraft near Afghanistan and made them available to the US efforts almost immediately. They needed him and he had the only airlift capacity in the region.… The deal was, if he flew, the US would leave him alone.” Richard Chichakli, a close associate of Bout’s, will later boast that Bout organized three flights carrying US personnel to Afghanistan. (He will later withdraw the claim.) Ruprah twice flies to the US for secret talks with the FBI about such deals, despite being on a UN travel ban list. Such contacts are kept secret from US officials attempting to arrest Bout. Ruprah will be arrested in Belgium in February 2002, and documents found in his possession are the only reason anything is known about his secret talks with the FBI. Two months later, he is freed on bail and immediately skips the country. He is soon arrested in Italy, then curiously freed on bail again, and then escapes again. He has not been rearrested since. [Farah and Braun, 2007, pp. 194-202] Prior to 9/11, Bout was the main arms dealer for the Taliban, greatly assisting al-Qaeda in the process. He had been supplying weapons to the Northern Alliance until about 1996, but switched sides once the Taliban gained the upper hand in the conflict (see October 1996-Late 2001). But despite these alleged US ties, it 2002 it will be reported that Bout has recently been helping al-Qaeda and the Taliban transport gold (see Summer 2002). He will work for the US military in Iraq in 2003 (see Late April 2003-2007).

According to a later account provided by CIA Director George Tenet, he bumps into Pentagon adviser Richard Perle in the White House who tells him, “Iraq has to pay a price for what happened yesterday, they bear responsibility.” Tenet, recalling his reaction to Perle’s statement, later says, “I’ve got the manifest with me that tells me al-Qaeda did this. Nothing in my head that says there is any Iraqi involvement in this in any way shape or form and I remember thinking to myself, as I’m about to go brief the president, ‘What the hell is he talking about?’” (Note: Tenet says in his book that this incident happened on September 12; however, after Perle insists that he was not in the country that day, Tenet concedes that it may have happened a little later). [Tenet, 2007; CBS News, 4/29/2007; CNN, 4/30/2007] On September 16, 2001, Perle will hint in a CNN interview that Iraq should be punished for the 9/11 attacks (see September 16, 2001).

The LfV, the security service for the Hamburg region, shows a surprising amount of knowledge about the al-Qaeda Hamburg cell, suggesting that the agency may have had an informant close to the cell. In 2004, Manfred Murck, deputy director of the LfV, will claim that the LfV’s greatest regret is that it never monitored the Al-Quds mosque in Hamburg. [Vanity Fair, 11/2004] However, shortly after 9/11, a photograph is found in the house of 9/11 hijacker Ziad Jarrah’s girlfriend Aysel Senguen that was taken at Jarrah and Senguen’s non-legally binding wedding in April 1999 (see (April 1, 1999)). Notes on the Photo - Eighteen out of 22 men in the picture are soon identified; many of them are members of the al-Qaeda Hamburg cell. Seven of the men are easily identified. Eleven more are identified by the LfV, and 10 of them by name, including 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta, and hijacker associates Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Abdelghani Mzoudi, and Mounir El Motassadeq. Investigators at other German intelligence agencies don’t know where the photo was taken, but the LfV reveals that it was taken inside the Al-Quds mosque. In 2003, the Frankfurt newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung will conclude that the LfV had an informant who knew details about the Al-Quds mosque and its attendees. The newspaper will base this on the LfV notes about the photo written just after 9/11. These notes show that not only does the LfV know that the picture was taken inside Al-Quds (when its agents were never supposed to go inside a mosque), but it knows the picture was taken in early 1999, because the carpet shown in the picture was changed shortly after that time. Furthermore, the LfV photo notes show knowledge of “even seemingly trivial details” about some of the people in the picture. For instance, the notes mention that hijacker associate Mzoudi “cleans and cooks together with Abderrasak Labied in the Al-Quds mosque.” [Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Frankfurt), 2/2/2003] (Labied is another suspected member of the Hamburg cell.) [Washington Post, 9/11/2002] Some men in the photo left Hamburg later in 1999, but the LfV notes are still able to identify them. Knowledge of Mohamed Atta's Group - The LfV also shows detailed knowledge about some of the 9/11 hijackers. For instance, starting in 1999, Atta led an Islamic study group at the Technical University Hamburg-Harburg known as “Islam AG.” The LfV is able to identify which of the men in the picture attended this study group. [Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Frankfurt), 2/2/2003]Informant or Some Other Source of Knowledge? - The LfV notes indicate that if the LfV did not have an informant involved with the Al-Quds mosque since 1999, at the very least it has a great deal of knowledge about the al-Qaeda Hamburg cell members.

President Bush gives a private speech at the Pentagon to military leaders. Accompanies by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Bush instructs his military audience to think about a response to 9/11 in the broadest possible terms. Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith will later recall, “The president said that this was a war, and that it was the Pentagon’s responsibility. He wanted it fought in the right spirit. People came away saying it was clear he wasn’t talking about half-measures.” [Vanity Fair, 5/2004]

CIA Director George Tenet and Cofer Black, the director of the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center, meet at 9:30 a.m. in the White House Situation Room with President Bush and the National Security Council. Tenet presents a plan for tracking down Osama bin Laden, toppling the Taliban in Afghanistan, and confronting terrorism worldwide. According to journalist Bob Woodward, the plan involves “bringing together expanded intelligence-gathering resources, sophisticated technology, agency paramilitary teams and opposition forces in Afghanistan in a classic covert action. They would then be combined with US military power and Special Forces into an elaborate and lethal package designed to destroy the shadowy terrorist networks.” A key concept is to utilize the Northern Alliance, which is the main opposition force in Afghanistan. Despite being “a strained coalition of sometimes common interests,” Tenet says that along with the CIA teams “and tons of money, the Alliance could be brought together into a cohesive fighting force.” Black gives a presentation describing the effectiveness of covert action. He says they will need to go after the Taliban as well as al-Qaeda, as the two are joined at the hip. He wants the mission to begin as soon as possible, and adds, “When we’re through with them, they will have flies walking across their eyeballs.” Black claims that once they are on the ground, victory could be achieved in weeks. According to Bob Woodward, “No one else in the room, including Tenet, believed that was possible.” Black also warns the president, “Americans are going to die.… How many, I don’t know. Could be a lot.” Bush responds, “That’s war. That’s what we’re here to win.” This is the second presentation laying out an increasingly detailed set of CIA proposals for expanding its fight against terrorism. (George Tenet had given the first when he met with the president the day before (see September 12, 2001).) Tenet will give a more detailed presentation of the CIA’s covert action plan two days later, at Camp David (see September 15, 2001). [Woodward, 2002, pp. 50-53; Washington Post, 1/29/2002; Kessler, 2003, pp. 233-234]

After a complete air flight ban in the US began during the 9/11 attacks, some commercial flights begin resuming this day. However, all private flights are still banned from flying. Nonetheless, at least one private flight carrying Saudi royalty takes place on this day. And in subsequent days, other flights carry royalty and bin Laden family members. These flights take place even as fighters escort down three other private planes attempting to fly. Most of the Saudi royals and bin Ladens in the US at the time are high school or college students and young professionals. [New York Times, 9/30/2001; Vanity Fair, 10/2003] The first flight is a Lear Jet that leaves from a private Raytheon hangar in Tampa, Florida, and takes three Saudis to Lexington, Kentucky. [Tampa Tribune, 10/5/2001] This flight apparently takes place several hours after a private meeting between President Bush and Prince Bandar, the Saudi ambassador to the US. Some think the idea of the flights were approved at that meeting (see September 13, 2001). For two years, this violation of the air ban is denied by the FAA, FBI, and White House, and decried as an urban legend except for one article detailing them in a Tampa newspaper. [Tampa Tribune, 10/5/2001] Finally, in 2003, counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke confirms the existence of these flights, and Secretary of State Powell confirms them as well. [MSNBC, 9/7/2003; Vanity Fair, 10/2003] However, the White House remains silent on the matter. [New York Times, 9/4/2003] Officials at the Tampa International Airport finally confirm this first flight in 2004. But whether the flight violated the air ban or not rests on some technicalities that remain unresolved. [Lexington Herald-Leader, 6/10/2004] The Saudis are evacuated to Saudi Arabia over the next several days (see September 14-19, 2001).

Late in the evening of September 13, 2001, search and rescue operations at the Pentagon have to be temporarily suspended when—after firefighters thought they had the crash site under control—a sizeable fire breaks out, sending smoke hundreds of feet into the air. [CNN, 9/13/2001; Associated Press, 9/14/2001; CNN, 9/14/2001; NPR, 9/14/2001] The fire erupts in the pile of debris at the impact area where the aircraft hit the Pentagon, and is apparently caused by a “hot spot” that reignited. Fire commanders had been concerned about the smoke coming from the pile earlier in the evening, yet there is no engine available to extinguish any fire. There was an engine by the pile all through the day, but this left at the end of the day shift. Because of tightened security, the engine due to replace it is taking longer than usual to arrive. [Creed and Newman, 2008, pp. 389 and 393] The order goes out: “We need everybody to evacuate. The building is on fire again.” Firefighters and workers for agencies such as the FBI and FEMA evacuate, either to the lawn in front of the crash site or the Pentagon’s center courtyard. Yet the fire appears to be contained in the rubble pile, with little danger of spreading. One worker questions: “So why are they stopping us? Why can’t we keep working?” [Creed and Newman, 2008, pp. 393-394 and 400-401] Eventually, a fire truck arrives to tackle the blaze. About two hours after it first flared up, the fire is out and recovery workers can continue their activities. [CNN, 9/14/2001; Creed and Newman, 2008, pp. 394-395 and 401] Firefighting and other rescue operations were also significantly disrupted three times during September 11-12, due to false alarms over unidentified aircraft approaching Washington (see (10:15 a.m.-10:38 a.m.) September 11, 2001, (2:00 p.m.) September 11, 2001, and (10:00 a.m.) September 12, 2001). [Fire Engineering, 11/2002]

Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell on the 700 Club. [Source: Tampa Bay Coalition]During a guest appearance on Pat Robertson’s 700 Club, televangelist Jerry Falwell tells listeners who he believes is responsible for the 9/11 attacks: homosexuals, abortionists, and the American Civil Liberties Union. Falwell: “I fear, as Donald Rumsfeld, the secretary of defense said yesterday, that this is only the beginning. And with biological warfare available to these monsters; the Husseins, the bin Ladens, the Arafats, what we saw on Tuesday, as terrible as it is, could be miniscule if, in fact, if in fact God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve.” Robertson: “Jerry, that’s my feeling. I think we’ve just seen the antechamber to terror. We haven’t even begun to see what they can do to the major population.” Falwell: “The ACLU’s got to take a lot of blame for this.” Robertson: “Well, yes.” Falwell: “And, I know that I’ll hear from them for this. But, throwing God out successfully with the help of the federal court system, throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools. The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say ‘you helped this happen.’” Robertson: “Well, I totally concur, and the problem is we have adopted that agenda at the highest levels of our government. And so we’re responsible as a free society for what the top people do. And, the top people, of course, is the court system.” Falwell: “Amen. Pat, did you notice yesterday? The ACLU, and all the Christ-haters, the People For the American Way, NOW [the National Organization for Women], etc. were totally disregarded by the Democrats and the Republicans in both houses of Congress as they went out on the steps and called out on to God in prayer and sang ‘God Bless America’ and said ‘let the ACLU be hanged.’” [Washington Post, 9/14/2001; People for the American Way, 9/17/2001; Unger, 2007, pp. 217-218]In a prayer during the broadcast, Robertson intones: “We have sinned against Almighty God, at the highest level of our government, we’ve stuck our finger in your eye. The Supreme Court has insulted you over and over again, Lord. They’ve taken your Bible away from the schools. They’ve forbidden little children to pray. They’ve taken the knowledge of God as best they can, and organizations have come into court to take the knowledge of God out of the public square of America.” [CNN, 9/14/2001; People for the American Way, 9/17/2001] The next day, after a firestorm of critical response (see September 13-14, 2001), Falwell will retreat somewhat from his remarks (see September 14, 2001), and again three days later (see September 17, 2001). But three years later, he will misrepresent his remarks and once again attack homosexuals (see November 28, 2004).

Larry Ellison. [Source: Mike Kepka / San Francisco Chronicle]The head of the company for which Flight 93 passenger Todd Beamer worked appears to be aware of Beamer’s call from the plane before its existence has been made public, and before even Beamer’s wife has been informed of it. Larry Ellison is the CEO of software company Oracle Corporation. In a memo sent out to the company’s employees, he writes, “We know Todd Beamer is dead. We believe he died when he and other passengers aboard Flight 93 tried to recover the hijacked airplane from the terrorists.… Considering the devastation wrought by the other aircraft, it is unquestionable that Todd’s brave actions, and [those] of his fellow passengers, saved countless lives on the ground.” Beamer’s wife Lisa later writes, “Clearly Larry was convinced that Todd had been involved. How did Larry know that? The FBI hadn’t made any announcement to that effect. Todd’s name had not shown up in any reports indicating that he might have been involved in some way.” The explanation she proposes is that “Larry, like many of us, couldn’t imagine Todd Beamer sitting idly by while terrorists threatened to hurt others.” [InfoWorld, 9/13/2001; Associated Press, 9/14/2001; Beamer and Abraham, 2002, pp. 184-185] Todd Beamer had spoken for 13 minutes to GTE supervisor Lisa Jefferson before Flight 93 crashed (see 9:45 a.m.-9:58 a.m. September 11, 2001). Yet the FBI has instructed Jefferson not to inform Beamer’s wife of the call, and only lifts this restriction on September 14. Lisa Beamer first learns of her husband’s call from Flight 93 on September 14, in a phone call from United Airlines (see September 14, 2001). [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 9/22/2001; Newsweek, 12/3/2001; Beliefnet (.com), 2006] Ellison and Oracle long have had close ties to US intelligence agencies, and in fact the company’s name originated from a CIA project code-named “Oracle.” [San Francisco Chronicle, 5/20/2002]

Brad Meltzer. [Source: Brad Meltzer]Morticians at Dover Air Force Base, Delaware, find a secret note inside the stomach of one of the Flight 77 passengers who died in the Pentagon attack, which the passenger wrote and then ate shortly before they died, but the morticians will later refuse to reveal what the note says. [Washington Post, 3/4/2018; CBS News, 3/5/2018] The incident will only come to light around 2015, when bestselling thriller writer Brad Meltzer is conducting research for his novel The Escape Artist, which will be released in 2018. Writer Will Learn about the Note during Research for a Novel - For his research, Meltzer will visit the Dover Port Mortuary at Dover Air Force Base, where the remains of the victims of the Pentagon attack were sent for identification (see September 11-November 16, 2001). [CBS Miami, 3/5/2018; New York Times, 3/16/2018] There, he will discuss the plot of his forthcoming novel with a mortician. He will ask if there is any way a person could leave a hidden message inside their body before they died. The mortician will answer that “if you’re on a plane that’s going down, if you handwrite a note and eat it, the human stomach has enough liquids to protect the note from burning” in the fire that erupts when the plane crashes, Meltzer will later recall. The mortician will then tell Meltzer that this “really happened” on 9/11. Writer Will Be Told How the Secret Note Was Found - He will say that after the remains of the victims of the Pentagon attack were brought to Dover Port Mortuary, “When the morticians worked on one of the bodies, they found a note inside.” Apparently, according to the mortician, “as the plane was going down, one of the victims on Flight 77 actually ate a note, which was found by a Dover mortician.” He will call the passenger’s note the “ultimate message in a bottle.” He will refuse to tell Meltzer what it said, though. Meltzer will assume that the note must have been written by someone in the military, since, he will comment, “Who else would know that the liquid in your belly could preserve a piece of paper?” [Washington Post, 3/4/2018]Pentagon Attack Victims' Remains Are Identified at Dover Air Base - The remains of the victims of the Pentagon attack are flown to Dover Air Force Base after 9/11, with the first set arriving there on the afternoon of September 13, and mortuary operations are fully underway by that evening. Over the next 16 days, a team of forensic specialists, scientists, and support personnel from the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology works at the Dover Port Mortuary to identify the victims. The FBI has a liaison at the mortuary while the remains are being identified, in case evidence is uncovered during the identification process. [Pentagram, 11/30/2001; Rossow, 2003, pp. 95; Condon-Rall, 2011, pp. 75] The secret note is presumably passed on to this liaison after being recovered from the victim’s stomach.

Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef. [Source: Robert Nickelsberg / Getty Images]Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban says that Osama bin Laden has told them he played no role in the September 11 attacks on the United States. Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, the Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, tells Reuters, “We asked from him, [and] he told [us] we don’t have any hand in this action.” [Reuters, 9/13/2001] Zaeef says bin Laden has been cut off from all outside communication, including telephone and the Internet, and so it would have been impossible for him to have coordinated the attacks. [Reuters, 9/13/2001; Los Angeles Times, 9/15/2001] Zaeef says the Taliban is willing to cooperate with the US in investigating the 9/11 attacks, stating, “We are ready for any help according to [Islamic] Sharia law.” But he stresses that if America has any evidence against bin Laden, it should provide it to the Taliban, which has sheltered him as a “guest.” [Reuters, 9/13/2001]

Ann Coulter. [Source: Universal Press Syndicate]Conservative columnist Ann Coulter writes an enraged op-ed for the National Review. Reflecting on the 9/11 attacks and the loss of her friend Barbara Olson in the attacks (see (9:20 a.m.) September 11, 2001), Coulter says America’s retribution should be immediate and generalized: “This is no time to be precious about locating the exact individuals directly involved in this particular terrorist attack. Those responsible include anyone anywhere in the world who smiled in response to the annihilation of patriots like Barbara Olson. We don’t need long investigations of the forensic evidence to determine with scientific accuracy the person or persons who ordered this specific attack. We don’t need an ‘international coalition.’ We don’t need a study on ‘terrorism.’ We certainly didn’t need a congressional resolution condemning the attack this week.” Coulter says a “fanatical, murderous cult”—Islam—has “invaded” the nation, welcomed by Americans and protected by misguided laws that prohibit discrimination and “‘religious’ profiling.” She blasts airport security measures that insist on checking every passenger—“[a]irports scrupulously apply the same laughably ineffective airport harassment to Suzy Chapstick as to Muslim hijackers. It is preposterous to assume every passenger is a potential crazed homicidal maniac. We know who the homicidal maniacs are. They are the ones cheering and dancing right now.” She concludes by calling for all-out vengeance: “We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren’t punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That’s war. And this is war.” [National Review, 9/13/2001] In October 2002, Reason magazine’s Sara Rimensnyder will call Coulter’s screed “the single most infamous foreign policy suggestion inspired by 9/11.” [Reason Magazine, 10/2002]

Nizar Trabelsi. [Source: Daily Telegraph]Nizar Trabelsi, an al-Qaeda operative involved in numerous plots, is arrested in Brussels, Belgium. Police find machine pistols, chemical formulas for making bombs, detailed maps of the US embassy in Paris, and a business suit—it appears Trabelsi intended to walk into the embassy with the suit covering a suicide bomb vest and then detonate the explosives. The arrest is apparently due to information gleaned from Djamel Begham, a top al-Qaeda operative arrested in July (see July 24 or 28, 2001). Two of the plots Trabelsi is said to be involved in, an attack on a NATO base in Belgium and the attack on the US embassy in Paris, are thwarted. Trabelsi will later be found guilty in Belgium of planning the attack on the base (see September 30, 2003). [CNN, 10/3/2001] However, a third plot in which Trabelsi is involved—a plot to blow up two transatlantic airliners—is not thwarted. The plot is to be carried out by two al-Qaeda operatives who are in contact with Trabelsi around this time, Saajid Badat and Richard Reid. Reid returned to Europe from Asia in July or August (see July 2001), after which he stayed in Belgium with Trabelsi, who also found him work in hotel kitchens. Badat is also in contact with Trabelsi using phone cards, and analysis of them will help lead to his arrest some time later. The plot will fail when Badat backs out (see (December 14, 2001)) and Reid is unable to detonate the explosives before he is overpowered by fellow passengers and crew (see December 22, 2001). It is unclear why this third plot is not stopped as well after Trabelsi’s arrest. [O'Neill and McGrory, 2006, pp. 229-231] However, his arrest does lead to more arrests in Spain 13 days later (see September 26, 2001).

Bryce Zabel. [Source: Publicity photo]Bryce Zabel, a longtime television writer and producer, was set to meet executives at the cable channel USA Network on this day, to present to them details of a miniseries he has been working on about an act of terrorism in the United States and how it leads to a global conflict, but the meeting and the miniseries are canceled as a result of the 9/11 attacks. [Dallas Observer, 9/20/2001; New York Times, 9/24/2001; NPR, 9/6/2002] Zabel, who was recently elected as chairman of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, previously created television shows such as Dark Skies and The Crow: Stairway to Heaven. [Deseret News, 8/12/2001; Dallas Observer, 9/20/2001] He is scheduled to meet with USA Network executives today, to present his plans for a miniseries called World War III for consideration. The miniseries, according to the Dallas Observer, would be “about how an act of terrorism on United States soil expanded into global conflict.” Show's Creator Considered 9/11-Like Scenarios - Zabel has been working with members of the US military to help him decide what kind of terrorist attack to incorporate into the storyline of World War III. “My partner and I had worked carefully with the Air Force and some Pentagon war planners to figure out the possible scenarios by which such a conflict could come into being,” he will later recall. Zabel and the military officials apparently considered scenarios resembling the 9/11 attacks: “The irony is that we had sort of rejected something as radical as what just happened [on September 11] as being a little too much,” Zabel will say. Therefore, according to Zabel, the 9/11 attacks meant that “the cautionary tale we hoped to tell in fiction ended up becoming a cautionary tale told on the evening news, and there almost is no need for the wake-up call, because America has been woken up.” Show Canceled due to 9/11 - It is unclear how long Zabel has been working on World War III, but according to the Dallas Observer, his scheduled meeting with USA Network executives to discuss the miniseries has been “on his calendar for weeks.” [Dallas Observer, 9/20/2001] The meeting and the miniseries are both canceled as a result of what happened on September 11. [NPR, 9/6/2002] “Obviously this show died when the victims died,” Zabel will say. [New York Times, 9/24/2001] Zabel will also note, two weeks after the 9/11 attacks, that his miniseries would have “reflected exactly what’s going on in the world right now.” [Media Life, 9/25/2001]World War III is one of a number of television dramas and movies featuring storylines about terrorism that are canceled or rewritten following 9/11 (see (January 1998-2001); February 1999-September 11, 2001; June-September 11, 2001; Before Before September 11, 2001; September 27, 2001; November 17, 2001). [Denver Post, 9/17/2001; Newsweek, 10/7/2001]

In an op-ed piece published in the New Republic, former CIA director James Woolsey calls on the Bush administration to re-examine evidence that could potentially tie Iraq to the 1993 bombing of the WTC. He cites a theory (see Late July or Early August 2001) that Iraqi intelligence helped bomber Ramzi Yousef steal the identity of a Kuwaiti student studying at a college in Wales. If this theory is correct, he says, “then it was Iraq that went after the World Trade Center last time. Which makes it much more plausible that Iraq has done so again.” In light of this, he argues, US authorities should consider the possibility that Saddam Hussein had a hand in the 9/11 attacks. “[I]ntelligence and law enforcement officials investigating the case would do well to at least consider another possibility: that the attacks—whether perpetrated by bin Laden and his associates or by others—were sponsored, supported, and perhaps even ordered by Saddam Hussein,” he writes. “As yet, there is no evidence of explicit state sponsorship of the September 11 attacks. But absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” [New Republic, 9/13/2001] Woolsey went to Britain in February 2001 and failed to find evidence to support this theory (see February 2001). But a few days later, the US Defense Department will send Woolsey to Britain again (see Late September 2001) to investigate the alleged Iraq link to the 1993 bombing.

Carl Levin. [Source: Publicity photo]Air Force General Richard Myers is questioned about the US military’s response to the 9/11 attacks when he appears before the Senate Armed Services Committee for his confirmation hearing as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but his answers are vague and confused, and he claims, incorrectly, that no fighter jets were scrambled in response to the hijackings until after the Pentagon was hit. [Shenon, 2008, pp. 119; Farmer, 2009, pp. 241-243] Myers has been the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff since March 2000. [US Air Force, 9/2005] With General Henry Shelton, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, flying toward Europe on the morning of September 11 (see (8:50 a.m.-10:00 a.m.) September 11, 2001), he served as the acting chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the 9/11 attacks. [Myers, 2009, pp. 10; Shelton, Levinson, and McConnell, 2010, pp. 431-433]Myers Says Fighters Were Only Scrambled after the Pentagon Attack - During the hearing, Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) asks if the Department of Defense was contacted by “the FAA or the FBI or any other agency” after the first two hijacked aircraft crashed into the World Trade Center, at 8:46 a.m. and 9:03 a.m. (see 8:46 a.m. September 11, 2001 and 9:03 a.m. September 11, 2001), but before 9:37 a.m., when the Pentagon was hit (see 9:37 a.m. September 11, 2001). Myers replies, “I don’t know the answer to that question.” Levin then asks if the military was “asked to take action against any specific aircraft” during the attacks. Myers answers, “When it became clear what the threat was, we did scramble fighter aircraft, AWACS, radar aircraft, and tanker aircraft to begin to establish orbits in case other aircraft showed up in the FAA system that were hijacked.” Myers elaborates later in the hearing, telling Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL): “[A]fter the second tower was hit, I spoke to the commander of NORAD, General [Ralph] Eberhart (see (9:37 a.m.) September 11, 2001). And at that point, I think the decision was at that point to start launching aircraft.” But he tells Levin that “to the best of my knowledge,” the order to scramble fighters was only given “after the Pentagon was struck.” Flight 93 Was Not Shot Down, Myers Says - Myers addresses the military’s response to Flight 93, the fourth hijacked plane, which crashed in a field in Pennsylvania (see (10:03 a.m.-10:10 a.m.) September 11, 2001 and (10:06 a.m.) September 11, 2001). He says: “[I]f my memory serves me… we had launched on the one that eventually crashed in Pennsylvania. I mean, we had gotten somebody close to it, as I recall.” However, he adds, “I’ll have to check that out.” When Levin mentions that there have been “statements that the aircraft that crashed in Pennsylvania was shot down,” Myers responds, “[T]he armed forces did not shoot down any aircraft.” He says, “[W]e never actually had to use force.” Although Myers appears unclear about when the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) launched fighters in response to the hijackings, he is more confident when he states: “At the time of the first impact on the World Trade Center, we stood up our Crisis Action Team. That was done immediately. So we stood it up. And we started talking to the federal agencies.” [US Congress, 9/13/2001]NORAD and the 9/11 Commission Contradict Myers's Account - Myers’s claim that fighters were only launched in response to the hijackings after the Pentagon was hit will later be contradicted by the accounts of NORAD and the 9/11 Commission, which state that fighters were ordered to take off from Otis Air National Guard Base in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, at 8:46 a.m. (see 8:46 a.m. September 11, 2001) and from Langley Air Force Base in Virginia at 9:24 a.m. (see 9:24 a.m. September 11, 2001). [North American Aerospace Defense Command, 9/18/2001; 9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 20, 27] The 9/11 Commission will also contradict Myers’s claim that the military launched fighters in response to Flight 93 and “had gotten somebody close to it.” “By the time the military learned about the flight,” the 9/11 Commission Report will state, “it had crashed.” [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 34]Myers's Testimony Prompts Criticism in the Media - Journalist and author Philip Shenon will question why Myers, a veteran Air Force fighter pilot, would give such an inaccurate account of the military’s response to the 9/11 attacks during the hearing. “It seemed obvious that Myers, of all people at the Pentagon, would want to know—would demand to know—how jet fighters under NORAD’s control had responded on the morning of September 11 to the threat in the skies,” he will write. [US Congress, 9/13/2001; Shenon, 2008, pp. 119] John Farmer, the senior counsel to the 9/11 Commission, will comment that “Myers’s evident confusion about precisely what had occurred prompted criticism in the media and a quick, if contradictory, response from the administration.” [Farmer, 2009, pp. 243] Major General Paul Weaver, director of the Air National Guard, will provide a more detailed account of the military’s response to the hijackings in an “impromptu hallway interview” at the Pentagon on September 14 (see September 14, 2001). [Dallas Morning News, 9/14/2001] And four days later, NORAD will release a timeline of its response to the hijackings (see September 18, 2001). [North American Aerospace Defense Command, 9/18/2001]

A secret French intelligence report from this date is skeptical of the Saudi Binladin Group, the bin Laden family company. Called “Elements on the Financial Resources of bin Laden,” the report discusses a powerful banker apparently connected to the company who was once close to the Saudi royal family and is the chief architect of a plan “that seems to have been used for the transfer to the terrorist of funds that came from the Gulf countries.” The report also lists assets believed to be under Osama bin Laden’s direct control. In addition to businesses in Sudan, Yemen, Malaysia, and Bosnia, he apparently still owns a hotel in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Other French reports from before 9/11 also question his ties to the Saudi royal family. One French intelligence official will later say that he and other top French officials “had a lot of difficulty believing that [bin Laden] didn’t have any relations with the Saudi monarchy just because he was banished. It was hard to accept.” [Le Monde (Paris), 4/15/2007] Ironically, the same day this French report is completed, the US allows Saudi royals and members of the bin Laden family to fly out of the US after only cursory FBI checks (see September 13, 2001 and September 14-19, 2001).

At a public briefing, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz says, “I think one has to say it’s not just simply a matter of capturing people and holding them accountable, but removing the sanctuaries, removing the support systems, ending states who sponsor terrorism. And that’s why it has to be a broad and sustained campaign.” Secretary of State Colin Powell is alarmed by Wolfowitz’s “ending states” comment and thinks it is a reference to invading Iraq. Hours later, Powell responds during another press briefing: “We’re after ending terrorism. And if there are states and regimes, nations that support terrorism, we hope to persuade them that it is in their interest to stop doing that. But I think ending terrorism is where I would like to leave it, and let Mr. Wolfowitz speak for himself.” According to journalist Dan Balz, that afternoon there is another National Security Council meeting. Powell says to Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Shelton in a private moment, “You’ve got to keep these guys [neoconservatives like Wolfowitz] in a box. I don’t know what’s going on over there, but this whole—all of this Iraq stuff is a problem.” According to Balz, General Shelton agrees that attacking Iraq is not a smart thing to do, but Shelton has already submitted his resignation and will not have a role in the decision. [PBS Frontline, 2/20/2003]

A map of the Flight 93 debris field. [Source: Pittsburgh Tribune- Review]Investigators say they have found debris from the Flight 93 crash far from the main crash site. A second debris field centers around Indian Lake about three miles from the crash scene, where eyewitnesses report seeing falling debris only moments after the crash. More debris is found in New Baltimore, some eight miles away. Later in the day, the investigators say all that debris likely was blown there. [CNN, 9/13/2001; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 9/13/2001] Another debris field is found six miles away, and human remains are found miles away. State police and the FBI have cordoned off an area where there is plane debris, about six to eight miles from the main crash site. After all of this is discovered, the FBI still “stresses” that “no evidence [has] surfaced” to support the idea that the plane was shot down. [CNN, 9/13/2001; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 9/13/2001] A half-ton piece of one of the engines is found 2,000 yards away from the main crash site. This was the single heaviest piece recovered from the crash. [Philadelphia Daily News, 12/28/2001; Independent, 8/13/2002] Days later, the FBI says the wide debris field was probably the result of the explosion on impact. The Independent nevertheless later cites the wide debris field as one of many reasons why widespread rumors remain that the plane was shot down. [Independent, 9/20/2001]

Barry Mawn. [Source: Associated Press]On September 13, New York authorities take into custody ten people of Middle Eastern descent at JFK International and La Guardia Airports, reportedly fearing they intend to hijack aircraft and commit another suicidal terrorist attack on a US target. This leads to all three major New York-area airports—JFK, La Guardia, and Newark—being abruptly shut down, just hours after they reopened for the first time since the 9/11 attacks took place. [Associated Press, 9/14/2001; Dallas Morning News, 9/14/2001; New York Times, 9/14/2001; Washington Post, 9/14/2001]Armed and Carrying False ID - According to the Washington Post, the detained individuals are carrying knives and false identification. [Washington Post, 9/14/2001] Four of them are reportedly arrested as they try to board a flight from JFK Airport to Los Angeles, and a woman is held on suspicion of assisting these four. Some of the four are reported as having pilots’ certificates from Flight Safety International in Vero Beach, Florida, where some of the alleged 9/11 hijackers are currently believed to have taken flying lessons. Later on, the other five men are arrested at La Guardia Airport “under similar circumstances.” [Dallas Morning News, 9/14/2001] According to the New York Times, “Law enforcement officials said one of those held was carrying a false pilot’s identification.” Furthermore, several of the detained men “showed up at the airport with tickets for flights canceled on Tuesday [September 11] and tried to use them.” Investigators say they believe one of the men had been among a group of passengers that behaved suspiciously and became aggressive after their aircraft—United Airlines Flight 23—had its takeoff canceled on the morning of 9/11 (see (After 9:19 a.m.) September 11, 2001). New York Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik says one of the men arrested at JFK Airport “attempted to clear security and he was stopped.” [New York Times, 9/14/2001]Men Released, No Connections Found to 9/11 Attacks - However, the following morning the FBI announces that none of the detainees had any connection to the 9/11 attacks, and all but one of them have been released. Barry Mawn, the head of the New York FBI office, says: “The reporting that has been going on all night, I can definitively tell you, is inaccurate.… [W]e did talk to approximately a dozen individuals. We have only one individual left who is still being questioned by the task force. All other ten have been released.” [CNN, 9/14/2001; PBS, 9/14/2001] Justice Department spokeswoman Mindy Tucker says that no knives, box cutters, guns, or other weapons were found on the individuals. [Washington Post, 9/15/2001] After talking to the directors of the FBI and CIA, Senator Joseph Biden (D-DE) tells CNN that the detained men had “no connection whatsoever to what happened at the World Trade towers or the Pentagon, or this organizational network.” He explains: “One guy, an actual pilot, got on the plane, coincidentally had his brother’s identification as well. His brother happened to live in the apartment complex that was one in Boston where some of [the alleged hijackers] had actually been.” Biden adds: “Ten other people were going to a Boeing conference. They had stickers on their bags.… The folks at the airport thought, hey, wait a minute, are they impersonating crew? And they weren’t.” Biden says the one man who has not yet been released “was a screwball who was acting out, you know, acting out and saying and demanding.… Making problems, and they arrested him.” By 11:20 a.m. on September 14, the three New York-area airports are reopened. [Associated Press, 9/14/2001; CNN, 9/14/2001]

It is reported that the many phone calls made by passengers from the hijacked flights are normally technically impossible to make. A major cell phone carrier spokeswoman claims, “Those were a series of circumstances that made those calls go through, which would not be repeated under normal circumstances.” Supposedly, the calls worked because they were made when the planes were close to the ground and they were kept short. [Wired News, 9/13/2001] However, many of the cell phone calls were made from high cruising altitudes and lasted ten minutes or more. The New York Times later reports, “According to industry experts, it is possible to use cell phones with varying success during the ascent and descent of commercial airline flights, although the difficulty of maintaining a signal appears to increase as planes gain altitude. Some older phones, which have stronger transmitters and operate on analog networks, can be used at a maximum altitude of ten miles, while phones on newer digital systems can work at altitudes of five to six miles. A typical airline cruising altitude would be 35,000 feet, or about 6.6 miles.”
[Slate, 9/14/2001] A spokesperson for the AT&T phone company notes that cell phone networks are not designed for calls from high altitudes. She suggests that “it was almost a fluke that the calls reached their destinations.”
[Wireless Review, 11/1/2001]

From left to right: Dick Cheney, Prince Bandar, Condoleezza Rice, and George W. Bush, on the Truman Balcony of the White House on September 13, 2001. [Source: White House]President Bush and Prince Bandar, the Saudi ambassador to the US, hold a private meeting at the White House. Vice President Cheney, National Security Adviser Rice, and Bandar’s aide Rihab Massoud also attend. [Woodward, 2006, pp. 80] Bandar is so close to the Bush family that he is nicknamed “Bandar Bush.” Senator Bob Graham (D-FL) later will note that while little is known about what is discussed in the meeting, mere hours later, the first flights transporting Saudi royals and members of the bin Laden family are in the air (see September 13, 2001). Over the next week, they will be taken to several gathering points, and then flown back to Saudi Arabia, apparently without first being properly interviewed by the FBI (see September 14-19, 2001). Graham will say, “Richard Clarke, then the White House’s counterterrorism tsar, told me that he was approached by someone in the White House seeking approval for the departures. He did not remember who made the request… The remaining question is where in the White House the request originated, and how.” Graham will imply that, ultimately, the request originated from this meeting between Bush and Bandar. [Graham and Nussbaum, 2004, pp. 105-107] Others also will later suggest that it was Bandar who pushed for and helped arrange the flights. [Vanity Fair, 10/2003; Fifth Estate, 10/29/2003 ] Bob Woodward will mention in a 2006 book that during the meeting, Bush tells Bandar, “If we [capture] somebody and we can’t get them to cooperate, we’ll hand them over to you.” Woodward will later comment, “With these words, the president casually expressed what became the US government’s rendition policy-the shifting of terrorist suspects from country to country for interrogation.… Though the Saudis denied it, the CIA believe the Saudis tortured terrorist suspects to make them talk.” [Woodward, 2006, pp. 80]

Flight 93’s flight data recorder, found at the crash site in Shanksville. [Source: US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division]Around 4:50 p.m. on September 13, investigators discover the flight data recorder from Flight 93, one of the plane’s two “black boxes.” It is buried about 15 feet down in the main crater at the crash site, near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Around 8:25 p.m. the following evening, the other ‘black box’—the plane’s cockpit voice recorder—is found about 25 feet below ground in roughly the same spot. [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 9/13/2001; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 9/15/2001; Longman, 2002, pp. 217] The flight data recorder monitors airplane functions like its speed and altitude, while the cockpit voice recorder picks up conversations in the plane’s cockpit. [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 9/14/2001] Both are mounted in a plane’s tail. They are encased in very strong materials, like titanium, and insulated so as to withstand a crash impact. [BBC, 9/15/2001] Wells Morrison, the FBI’s second in command at the Flight 93 crash scene, later comments, “It was strange. The black boxes are right next to each other on the aircraft, but one was found thirteen feet deeper into the crater than the other.… We were surprised, quite honestly, that we didn’t find them sooner.” [Kashurba, 2002, pp. 109 and 115] The cockpit voice recorder is sent to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) in Washington, and then on to its manufacturer, Honeywell, to try to extract information from it. [CBS News, 9/16/2001; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 11/4/2001] It is supposedly the only one from the four hijacked flights to have survived the crash impact and ensuing fire. [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 456] In April 2002, the 31-minute recording from it is played in private to victims’ relatives (see April 18, 2002). It will be played in public for the first time in April 2006, during the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui (see April 12, 2006). [CNN, 4/13/2006]

Immediately after the 9/11 attacks, the Russian government realizes the US will attempt to push into the Central Asian “Stans”—Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan—as part of the US effort to defeat the Taliban and al-Qaeda in the region. But these countries had been part of the Soviet Union ten years before, and Russia does not want the US increasing its influence there. On September 13, 2001, Russian intelligence officials hold a meeting with Northern Alliance figures and the other governments that support the Northern Alliance—Iran, India, and Uzbekistan. They promise to increase support to the Northern Alliance in an attempt to outbid the US and keep the US military out of the region. Soon after, Tajikistan announces that it will not allow its airspace to be used by US aircraft. But Uzbekistan is the key country, since it has the most military bases inherited from the Soviet era, the largest population, and also a key strategic location. It also has been working with the CIA against al-Qaeda and the Taliban for several years (see 1998 and After). Uzbekistan indicates it is going to allow the US to base some of its military operations there. Realizing that the other countries are likely to follow Uzbekistan’s lead, Russia switches positions and attempts to make a collective offer to the US. On September 17, Russian President Vladimir Putin holds a meeting in Moscow with the leaders from all the “Stans” in an attempt to reach a joint agreement about allowing the US to use former Soviet military bases. A formal deal is reached between the US and Russia on September 22 after Putin speaks to President Bush on the telephone. The US agrees that its bases in the region will only be temporary. Bush will stop criticizing Russia for its war in Chechnya. The US will consult with Russia before taking further steps in Central Asia. The US will help accelerate Russian integration into Western economic institutions. Russian commanders who fought in Afghanistan in the 1980s give extensive briefings to US Army generals. By this time, CIA teams are already moving into the K2 air base in southern Uzbekistan. Tajikistan also reverses course and allows the US to use bases there as well. Deals between the US, Russia, and Central Asian countries are initially kept secret from the public. But within days of the agreement between Putin and Bush, newspapers begin to report that US forces are moving into Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Other countries make similar deals later (see September 22, 2001-December 2001). [Rashid, 2008, pp. 69-71]

Aircraft debris area. [Source: NIST]In February 2002, the Associated Press reports that the only remaining pieces of the planes that hit the WTC located at the Staten Island landfill, where workers are sorting through the debris from Ground Zero, are some pieces of landing gear and a piece of Flight 175’s fuselage. FBI spokesman Joseph Valiquette says, “So little (airplane) debris has been recovered that there’s really no way to quantify it.” [Associated Press, 2/24/2002; CBS News, 2/25/2002] Yet other reports contradict this. According to the New York Times, soon after 9/11, rescue workers find “large sections of one of the airplanes, including passenger seats,” which had landed on the roof and scaffolding on a small skyscraper at 90 West Street. [New York Times, 6/8/2002; New York Times, 3/5/2004] Some early reports even claim that a cockpit of one of the planes and some plane seats with the remains of passengers strapped into them have been found in the WTC debris (See September 12-14, 2001). Other recovered plane wreckage includes life jackets and portions of seats found on the roof of the nearby Bankers Trust building. One of the planes’ jet engines and a landing gear from Flight 175 are found in streets nearby. [Civil Engineering, 5/2002; Federal Emergency Management Agency, 5/1/2002, pp. 2-16, 2-31] In June 2002, parts of one plane’s luggage racks are found among debris in adjacent buildings. [Associated Press, 6/8/2002; New York Times, 6/8/2002] Some photographs of aircraft debris found at Ground Zero can be found in the book Above Hallowed Ground which gathers pictures taken by NYPD officers. [Department, 2002, pp. 66-69] Another photography book, Aftermath by Joel Meyerowitz, includes a picture of an aircraft wheel and fuselage recovered at Fresh Kills. [Meyerowitz, 2006, pp. 223]

Mohamed el-Atriss produced fake ID cards for the 9/11 hijackers. [Source: Associated Press]Mohamed el-Atriss, who supplied some of the hijackers with fake IDs (see (July-August 2001)), is visited by FBI agents and begins to help them with their inquiries. [Washington Post, 2/5/2003; Newark Star-Ledger, 10/20/2003] El-Atriss turns over his files to the FBI and, according to his lawyer, promises to “keep his eyes and ears open” for other Islamic militants. He tells the FBI he did not know the hijackers’ intentions when he sold them the ID cards. [Bergen Record, 9/11/2006] He is interviewed extensively by federal authorities over the next few months and successfully passes a lie detector test confirming he did not know they intended to hijack a plane. [Newark Star-Ledger, 10/20/2003] However, authorities plant an electronic surveillance device inside a printer he orders, to monitor who he is making documents for. [Bergen Record, 9/11/2006] El-Atriss’ usefulness suffers a setback when a local sheriff raids his business and arrests him in 2002 (see July 31, 2002), apparently without the FBI’s approval (see July 31, 2002 and After).

ISI Director Lt. Gen. Mahmood Ahmed, extending his Washington visit because of the 9/11 attacks, meets with US officials and negotiates Pakistan’s cooperation with the US against al-Qaeda. On September 12, 2001, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage meets with Mahmood and allegedly demands that Pakistan completely support the US or “or be prepared to live in the Stone Age” (see September 12, 2001). [Deutsche Presse-Agentur (Hamburg), 9/12/2001; Japan Economic Newswire, 9/17/2001; LA Weekly, 11/9/2001] On September 13, Armitage and Secretary of State Powell present Mahmood seven demands as a non-negotiable ultimatum. The demands are that Pakistan: Gives the US blanket overflight and landing rights for all US aircraft. Gives the US access to airports, naval bases, and borders for operations against al-Qaeda. Provides immediate intelligence sharing and cooperation. Cuts all shipments of fuel to the Taliban and stops Pakistani fighters from joining them. Publicly condemns the 9/11 attacks. Ends support for the Taliban and breaks diplomatic relations with them. Stops al-Qaeda operations on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, intercepts arms shipments through Pakistan, and ends all logistical support for al-Qaeda. Pakistan supposedly agrees to all seven. [Washington Post, 1/29/2002; Rashid, 2008, pp. 28] Mahmood also has meetings with Senator Joseph Biden (D-DE), Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Secretary of State Powell, regarding Pakistan’s position. [New York Times, 9/13/2001; Reuters, 9/13/2001; Associated Press, 9/13/2001; Miami Herald, 9/16/2001] On September 13, the airport in Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan, is shut down for the day. A government official will later say the airport was closed because of threats made against Pakistan’s “strategic assets,” but will not elaborate. The next day, Pakistan declares “unstinting” support for the US, and the airport is reopened. It will later be suggested that Israel and India threatened to attack Pakistan and take control of its nuclear weapons if Pakistan did not side with the US. [LA Weekly, 11/9/2001] It will later be reported that Mahmood’s presence in Washington was a lucky blessing; one Western diplomat saying it “must have helped in a crisis situation when the US was clearly very, very angry.” [Financial Times, 9/18/2001] By September 15, Mahmood is back in Pakistan, and he takes part in a meeting with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and other Pakistani leaders, discussing the US ultimatum. That evening, Musharraf announces that it completely agrees to the terms (see September 15, 2001). However, Pakistan soon begins backtracking on much of the agreement. For instance, just four days after agreeing to the ultimatum, Musharraf fails to condemn the 9/11 attacks or the Taliban or al-Qaeda in an important televised speech, even though he explicitly agreed to do so as part of the agreement (see September 19, 2001). The Pakistani ISI also continues to supply the Taliban with fuel, weapons, and even military advisers, until at least November 2001 (see Late September-November 2001). Pakistani Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar will later describe Pakistan’s policy: “We agreed that we would unequivocally accept all US demands, but then we would express out private reservations to the US and we would not necessarily agree with all the details.” [Rashid, 2008, pp. 28]

None of the manifests for the hijacked flights have ever been released, except for this partially obscured page which appears in Terry McDermott’s 2005 book, Perfect Soldiers. McDermott has not explained how or where he got this document. Names of the five hijackers are highlighted. [Source: Terry McDermott]On September 13, the FBI says there were 18 hijackers, and releases their names. Hani Hanjour’s name is not on the list. [CNN, 9/13/2001] On the morning of the next day, CNN announces on the air that “CNN managed to grab a list of the names of the 18 suspected hijackers that is supposed to be officially released by justice sometime later today.” An announcer reads the list, which actually contains 19 names. It is the same list as the day before, except for one new name: Mosear Caned. (Note that the name is a very rough phonetic spelling from a CNN transcript.) [CNN, 9/14/2001] Later in the day, the list is revised. Caned is gone and is replaced by Hani Hanjour. It is never explained who Caned is, how he got on the list, or even how his name is correctly spelled. No name even remotely similar to his appears on any of the released manifests of the hijacked 9/11 flights. [CNN, 9/14/2001; Associated Press, 9/14/2001] A few days later, it is reported that Hanjour’s “name was not on the American Airlines manifest for [Flight 77] because he may not have had a ticket.” [Washington Post, 9/16/2001]

The response to televangelists Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson’s blaming 9/11 on homosexuals, pro-choice believers, and civil liberties groups (see September 13, 2001) is quick and fierce. Even the White House refuses to join Falwell and Robertson in their comments, with a White House spokesman calling the statements “inappropriate” and saying, “The president does not share those views.” Ralph G. Neas, the head of People for the American Way, calls the remarks “absolutely inappropriate and irresponsible.” An American Civil Liberties Union spokeswoman says the organization “will not dignify the Falwell-Robertson remarks with a comment.” [Washington Post, 9/14/2001] Lorri L. Jean, the executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, demands an apology from Falwell. “The terrible tragedy that has befallen our nation, and indeed the entire global community, is the sad byproduct of fanaticism,” she says. “It has its roots in the same fanaticism that enables people like Jerry Falwell to preach hate against those who do not think, live, or love in the exact same way he does. The tragedies that have occurred this week did not occur because someone made God mad, as Mr. Falwell asserts. They occurred because of hate, pure and simple. It is time to move beyond a place of hate and to a place of healing. We hope that Mr. Falwell will apologize to the US and world communities.” [CNN, 9/14/2001]

At the Flight 93 crash site, an excavator digs through the soil where the plane impacted. [St. Anthony Messenger, 9/6/2006] It takes scoops of dirt and dumps them into a high-lift bucket, which takes the dirt to a flagged off area and slowly dumps it there. A couple of FBI men then search through it with their hands. Occasionally, the excavator digs into a “hot spot” in the earth, causing a small fire. The Shanksville Volunteer Fire Department has to be called in to extinguish these fires. [Kashurba, 2002, pp. 56 and 128] The cause of the ‘hot spots’ is unknown.

A Defense Department paper for a Camp David meeting with top Bush administration officials to take place the next day (see September 15, 2001) specifies three priority targets for initial action in response to the 9/11 attacks: al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and Iraq. It argues that of the three, al-Qaeda and Iraq pose a strategic threat to the US. Iraq’s alleged long-standing involvement in terrorism is cited, along with its interest in WMDs. [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 335, 559]

CBS News announces that “contrary to early reports, US Air Force jets did get into the air on Tuesday while the attacks were under way.” According to this new account, the first fighters got airborne toward New York City at 8:52 a.m. [CBS News, 9/14/2001] The day before this announcement, acting Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Richard Myers in Congressional testimony stated that the first fighters got airborne only after the Pentagon was hit at 9:37 a.m. (see September 13, 2001). [US Congress, 9/13/2001] NORAD spokesman Marine Corps Major Mike Snyder also claimed no fighters launched anywhere until after the Pentagon was hit. [Boston Globe, 9/15/2001] Four days later, the official NORAD timeline is changed to include this new account. [North American Aerospace Defense Command, 9/18/2001] New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani later testifies before the 9/11 Commission that he found out from the White House at about 9:58 a.m. that the first fighters were not launched toward New York City until twelve minutes earlier—9:46 a.m. [9/11 Commission, 5/19/2004] This would correspond to Myers’ and Snyder’s accounts that no fighters are scrambled until after the Pentagon is hit. But the 9/11 Commission later agrees with this CBS report and by their account the first fighters launch around 8:52. [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004]

In interviews with the Boston Globe, flight instructors in Florida say that it was common for students with Saudi affiliations to enter the US with only cursory background checks and sometimes none. Some flight schools, including some of those attended by the hijackers, have exemptions that allow the schools to unilaterally issue paperwork that students can present at US embassies and consulates so they can obtain visas. Saudi Arabia is possibly the only Arab country with such an exemption. [Associated Press, 7/17/2002]

Officials deny that Flight 93 was shot down, but propose the theory that the hijackers had a bomb on board and blew up the plane. [Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, 9/14/2001] Later in the month, it is reported that the “FBI has determined from the on site investigation that no explosive was involved.” [Associated Press, 9/25/2001]

Officials admit that two planes were near Flight 93 when it crashed, which matches numerous eyewitness accounts. For example, local man Dennis Decker says that immediately after hearing an explosion, “We looked up, we saw a midsized jet flying low and fast. It appeared to make a loop or part of a circle, and then it turned fast and headed out. If you were here to see it, you’d have no doubt. It was a jet plane, and it had to be flying real close when that 757 went down… If I was the FBI, I’d find out who was driving that plane.” [Bergen Record, 9/14/2001] Later the same day, the military says it can “neither confirm nor deny” the nearby planes. [Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, 9/14/2001] Two days later, they claim there were two planes near, but that they were a military cargo plane and business jet, and neither had anything to do with the crash. [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 9/16/2001] Supposedly, the business jet was requested to fly low over the crash site to help rescuers find the crash site, 25 minutes after all aircraft in the US had been ordered to land. However, the story appears physically impossible since the FBI says this jet was at 37,000 feet and asked to descend to 5,000 feet. [Pittsburgh Channel, 9/15/2001] That would have taken many minutes for that kind of plane, and witnesses report seeing the plane flying very low even before the crash. [Bergen Record, 9/14/2001] Another explanation of a farmer’s plane 45 minutes later is put forth, but that also does not fit the time at all. [Pittsburgh Channel, 9/15/2001] Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz states: “We responded awfully quickly, I might say, on Tuesday [9/11], and, in fact, we were already tracking in on that plane that crashed in Pennsylvania. I think it was the heroism of the passengers on board that brought it down. But the Air Force was in a position to do so if we had had to.” [NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, 9/14/2001] The next day, Maj. Gen. Paul Weaver, the director of the Air National Guard denies that any plane was scrambled after Flight 93. [Seattle Times, 9/16/2001] That in turn contradicts what Vice President Cheney will say later. [Washington Post, 1/27/2002]

Flight 77’s damaged cockpit voice recorder. [Source: FBI]At around 3:40 a.m., investigators at the Pentagon recover the two “black boxes” from Flight 77. [Washington Times, 9/14/2001] These boxes are the plane’s flight data recorder and its cockpit voice recorder. [BBC, 9/15/2001] Some news reports claim they are found by two Fairfax County firefighters, Carlton Burkhammer and Brian Moravitz, as they comb through debris near the impact site. [Washington Post, 9/19/2001; Newsweek, 9/28/2001] But according to Arlington County spokesman Dick Bridges, members of the FBI’s evidence response team find them. [PBS, 9/14/2001; Washington Post, 9/14/2001] Authors Patrick Creed and Rick Newman will later clarify that Burkhammer and Moravitz find an object initially believed to be one of the black boxes, but closer inspection reveals it to be just “a charred chunk of machinery.” Subsequently, FBI photographer Jennifer Hill finds the cockpit voice recorder in a stack of rubble while assisting searchers. Thirty minutes later, a National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) expert locates the flight data recorder in the same area. [Creed and Newman, 2008, pp. 396-397 and 400-402] But Allyn Kilsheimer, a structural engineer who helps coordinate the emergency response at the Pentagon, later claims he had “found the black box,” which, he says, he had “stepped on… by accident.” [GW Magazine, 3/2002; Popular Mechanics, 3/2005] Washington FBI agent Christopher Combs says, “Somebody almost threw [the black boxes] away because they didn’t know what they looked like.” [Disaster News Network, 10/30/2002]Conflicting Accounts of Where Boxes Are Found - According to Dick Bridges, the two recorders are discovered “right where the plane came into the building.” [Associated Press, 9/14/2001] But the American Society of Civil Engineers’ Pentagon Building Performance Report, released in 2003, will claim that the flight data recorder was found “nearly 300 ft into the structure.” [Mlakar et al., 1/2003, pp. 40 ] In Creed and Newman’s account, the recorders are found in the Pentagon’s middle C Ring, near the “punch-out” hole made by the impacting aircraft. [Creed and Newman, 2008, pp. 400-402]Boxes Taken Away for Analysis - The boxes are taken to the NTSB’s laboratory in Washington, where data is extracted from the flight data recorder, but they are reclaimed by the FBI later on in the morning. [Washington Times, 9/14/2001; Creed and Newman, 2008, pp. 402] A flight data recorder tracks an airplane’s flight movements for the last 25 hours, while the cockpit voice recorder contains radio transmissions and sounds from the cockpit for the last 30 minutes of its flight. Both are mounted in the tail of an aircraft and are encased in very strong materials like titanium. According to American Airlines and United Airlines, the black boxes aboard Flight 77 and the other hijacked planes were modern solid-state versions, which are more resistant to damage than older magnetic tape recorders. [Associated Press, 9/15/2001; BBC, 9/15/2001] FBI Director Robert Mueller later says that Flight 77’s data recorder has provided altitude, speed, and other information about the flight, but the voice recorder contained “nothing useful.” [CBS News, 2/25/2002] The 9/11 Commission will describe the cockpit voice recorder as being “badly burned and not recoverable.” [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 456] According to CBS News, preliminary information shows that the cockpit voice tape “appears to be blank or erased.” [CBS News, 9/16/2001] The two black boxes from Flight 93 are also recovered around this time (see September 13-14, 2001).

It is initially reported that Flight 93 was traveling fairly slowly when it crashed on September 11. Days after the attacks, the New York Times reports that Flight 93 “slammed into the ground at a speed that law enforcement authorities said might have approached 300 miles an hour.” [New York Times, 9/14/2001] Another newspaper reports, “Flight 93 slammed into the earth nose-first at over 200 mph, according to estimates by the National Transportation Safety Board and other experts.” [News Journal (Wilmington, DE), 9/16/2001] However, by 2002 it is being reported that the plane crashed going nearly 600 mph. [Longman, 2002, pp. 212] “It could have even broken the sound barrier for a while,” says Hank Krakowski, who was United Airlines’ director of flight operations on September 11. [New York Times, 3/27/2002] The design limits of the plane are 287 mph when flying below 10,000 feet. [Longman, 2002, pp. 208]

E Team crisis management software. [Source: Police Magazine]New York City’s Office of Emergency Management (OEM) is much aided in its recovery efforts at Ground Zero when it starts using a little-known piece of emergency management software, which it only purchased last month and that was originally going to be launched on September 17. [Wall Street Journal, 10/23/2001; Wired News, 11/2/2001] The software, called E Team, helps organizations to “prepare for, respond to, and recover from disasters and emergencies of all types.” [California Technology Ventures, 10/16/2001] It was created by E Team Inc., a company based in Canoga Park, California. [e-ProWire, 5/22/2002] The New York City OEM only bought E Team in August (see August 2001). It installed the software on computers in its Emergency Operations Center in World Trade Center Building 7 (WTC 7) and intended to launch the system on September 17. [Wall Street Journal, 10/23/2001; Wired News, 11/2/2001]Engineers Put Together New System to Manage Recovery Operation - The OEM was in contact with E Team Inc. executives within a few hours of the attacks on the WTC on September 11. [Wall Street Journal, 10/23/2001; e-ProWire, 5/22/2002] E Team Inc. employees reportedly suspected in advance that WTC 7—which housed the computers on which their software was installed—would collapse. Matt Walton, the company’s CEO, will later recall: “We knew that tower number 7 was probably not going to make it. We contacted the [New York City] mayor’s office and told them we would put up the New York databases on our own servers.” [Wired News, 11/2/2001] That night, a group of E Team Inc. engineers gathered at the company’s headquarters in Canoga Park, and put together a system on the company’s servers using data that the New York City OEM had sent to the company to prepare for the launch of the E Team system on September 17. By September 12, the engineers had the system ready for use. [Wall Street Journal, 10/23/2001]System Goes into Operation at New Command Center - For the first couple of days after 9/11, the OEM had to coordinate its recovery efforts on paper or using e-mail, because its emergency management computer systems were destroyed when WTC 7 collapsed on the afternoon of September 11 (see (5:20 p.m.) September 11, 2001). An OEM spokesman will comment, “It became apparent that we needed very sophisticated technology to effectively handle the crisis.” [Wired News, 11/2/2001] Then, on September 14, the E Team system goes into operation at the OEM’s temporary command center at Pier 92 on the Hudson River, where several server computers have been set up to run the software and 200 workstations are connected to the system. [Wall Street Journal, 10/23/2001; e-ProWire, 5/22/2002] Troy Armstrong and John Hughes, two senior E Team Inc. employees who are distinguished emergency management professionals, are installed at the temporary command center. They are supplemented with three additional E Team Inc. employees. System Plays Key Role in Recovery Operation - The main initial uses of E Team in response to the 9/11 attacks are resource management and situation reporting, but over time the system will also be used for incident reporting, asset tracking, action planning, and logistics. [California Technology Ventures, 10/16/2001] E Team tracks everything related to the recovery efforts at Ground Zero. It enables emergency responders to monitor the location of fires, personnel, supplies, and trucks. It also handles resource requests. [Wired News, 11/2/2001; e-ProWire, 5/22/2002] It makes the recovery operation “much more efficient,” according to Lieutenant Colonel John Flanagan of the New York Army National Guard. [Wall Street Journal, 10/23/2001] In total, more than 1,700 individuals from over 200 organizations will use the E Team system at the height of the rescue and recovery efforts. [Council of the City of New York, 8/2002, pp. 22 ]

In interviews, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak raises questions about who was behind the 9/11 attacks, in particular questioning whether the alleged perpetrators had the necessary flying skills to carry out the attacks. Before becoming president, Mubarak had a successful career in the Egyptian Air Force, having been a pilot, instructor, and squadron leader. He’d eventually become director of the Air Force Academy, Air Force chief of staff, commander of the Air Force, and deputy minister for military affairs. [Egyptian Presidency, 1997; George Washington University, 6/29/1999] Just days after 9/11, he discusses the attack on the Pentagon, saying, “The Pentagon is not very high, a pilot could come straight to the Pentagon like this to hit, he should have flown a lot in this area to know the obstacles which could meet him when he is flying very low with a big commercial plane to hit the Pentagon in a special place.” He adds, “Somebody has studied this very well, someone has flown in this area very much.” When asked, “Are you suggesting it was an inside operation?” he replies, “Frankly speaking, I don’t want to jump to conclusions.” [Egyptian Presidency, 9/15/2001] In an interview six weeks later, he repeats his concerns, saying, “I find it hard to believe that people who were learning to fly in Florida could, within a year and a half, fly large commercial airlines and hit with accuracy the towers of the World Trade Center which would appear, to the pilot from the air, the size of a pencil. Only a professional pilot could carry out this mission, not someone who learned to fly for 18 months in Florida.” [Egyptian Presidency, 10/25/2001] Mubarak also later claims that Egyptian intelligence had warned American officials 12 days before 9/11 that al-Qaeda was in the advance stages of conducting a significant operation against a US target (see August 30, 2001-September 4, 2001). [Associated Press, 12/7/2001; New York Times, 6/4/2002]

The FAA’s New York Center receives an e-mail, directing it to retain all data and records for September 11, yet one of the center’s managers will later ignore this directive and deliberately destroy a tape on which six of the center’s air traffic controllers recalled their interactions with two of the hijacked aircraft. [New York Times, 5/6/2004; Washington Post, 5/6/2004; Air Safety Week, 5/17/2004 ]Directive Intended to Preserve Records - The directive has been issued by the air traffic evaluations and investigations staff at the FAA’s headquarters in Washington, DC. This staff is the FAA’s policy authority on aircraft accident and incident investigations. According to its manager, the intent of the directive is to preserve all voice communications, radar data, and facility records that would have been returned to service after the normal 15-day retention period. E-mail Says Retain All Records - The directive is communicated to the New York Center in an e-mail from the FAA’s eastern region quality assurance manager. The e-mail states: “Retain and secure until further notice ALL administrative/operational data and records.… If a question arises whether or not you should retain the data, RETAIN IT.” It includes a phone number to call, should the recipients have any questions. [US Department of Transportation, 5/4/2004 ]Manager Disregards Directive - Both Mike McCormick, the New York Center manager, and Kevin Delaney, the center’s quality assurance manager, who was instructed to tape-record the controllers’ witness accounts on September 11 (see 11:40 a.m. September 11, 2001), receive this e-mail. Yet Delaney does not follow the directive, as he will subsequently destroy the tape with the controllers’ statements on (see Between December 2001 and February 2002). [9/11 Commission, 10/1/2003 ; US Department of Transportation, 5/4/2004 ; Air Safety Week, 5/17/2004 ]Two Reasons for Ignoring Directive - Delaney will later give Department of Transportation investigators two reasons why he ignores the directive. Firstly, he will say he did not consider it to apply to the tape of the controllers’ statements, “because he felt the tape had been created in violation of FAA air traffic policy.” Secondly, he will claim the directive “could not have been intended to apply to the tape-recorded statements, since the region and FAA headquarters did not know of the tape’s existence” (see September 12, 2001-October 2003). [US Department of Transportation, 5/4/2004 ] However, Air Safety Week will state that, according to “experienced criminal investigators,” “[w]hether higher authorities were aware or not, [and] whether the tape was a temporary or permanent record, is immaterial.” [Air Safety Week, 5/17/2004 ]

Dominick Suter, owner of the company Urban Moving Systems, flees the country to Israel. The FBI later tells ABC News, “Urban Moving may have been providing cover for an Israeli intelligence operation.” Suter has been tied to the five Israeli agents caught filming the WTC attack. The FBI had questioned Suter around September 12, removing boxes of documents and a dozen computer hard drives. However, when the FBI returns a few days later, he is gone. [New Jersey Department of Law and Public Safety, 12/13/2001; Forward, 3/15/2002; ABC News, 6/21/2002]

Mayo Shattuck III resigns, effective immediately, as head of the Alex Brown unit of Deutsche Bank. No reason is given. Some speculate later that this could have to do with the role of Deutsche Bank in the pre-9/11 purchases of put options on the stock of companies most affected by 9/11. Deutsche Bank is also one of the four banks most used by the bin Laden family. [New York Times, 9/15/2001; Wall Street Journal, 9/27/2001]

In a speech at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC, President Bush says that “our responsibility to history is already clear: to answer these attacks and rid the world of evil.” [Salon, 3/27/2008] Two days later, he says, “This is a new kind of evil, and we understand… this crusade, this war on terrorism, is going to take a while.” [New York Times Magazine, 9/11/2005]

Televangelist Jerry Falwell backs away from his remarks blaming homosexuals, abortionists, and civil liberties groups for the 9/11 attacks (see September 13, 2001). He says his comments were taken “out of context,” explains that he was “making a theological statement, not a legal statement,” and adds: “I put all the blame legally and morally on the actions of the terrorist.… I would never blame any human being except the terrorists, and if I left that impression with gays or lesbians or anyone else, I apologize.” But America’s “secular and anti-Christian environment left us open to our Lord’s [decision] not to protect. When a nation deserts God and expels God from the culture… the result is not good.” [Washington Post, 9/14/2001] Falwell uses the Bible to justify his remarks: “I do believe, as a theologian, based upon many Scriptures and particularly Proverbs 14:23, which says ‘living by God’s principles promotes a nation to greatness, violating those principles brings a nation to shame.’” The ACLU and other civil liberties organizations “have attempted to secularize America, have removed our nation from its relationship with Christ on which it was founded,” he asserts. “I therefore believe that that created an environment which possibly has caused God to lift the veil of protection which has allowed no one to attack America on our soil since 1812.” [CNN, 9/14/2001]

Email Updates

Receive weekly email updates summarizing what contributors have added to the History Commons database

Donate

Developing and maintaining this site is very labor intensive. If you find it useful, please give us a hand and donate what you can.Donate Now

Volunteer

If you would like to help us with this effort, please contact us. We need help with programming (Java, JDO, mysql, and xml), design, networking, and publicity. If you want to contribute information to this site, click the register link at the top of the page, and start contributing.Contact Us